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COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



OTHER BOOKS BY BISHOP QUAYLE 

BOOKS AS A DELIGHT 
THE THRONE OF GRACE 
BESIDE LAKE BEAUTIFUL 
POEMS 

THE CLIMB TO GOD 
LAYMEN IN ACTION 
THE SONG OF SONGS 
THE PASTOR-PREACHER 
GOD'S CALENDAR 
IN GOD'S OUT-OF-DOORS 
THE PRAIRIE AND THE SEA 
LOWELL 

THE BLESSED LIFE 
ETERNITY IN THE HEART 
A HERO— JEAN VALJEAN 
KING CROMWELL 
. A HERO AND SOME OTHER FOLK 

THE POET'S POET AND OTHER ESSAYS 
THE GENTLEMAN IN LITERATURE 
BOOKS AND LIFE 

RECOVERED YESTERDAYS IN LITERATURE 
THE DYNAMITE OF GOD 



The Uncommon 
Commonplace 



B 



WILLIAM A. QUAYLE 



^^^ 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI 






Copyright, 1921, by 
WILLIAM A. QUAYLE 



OCl 26 192 



Printed in the United States of America 



§)CI.A624989 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. The Uncommon Commonplace ,. 7 

n. To Be 19 

m. To Work 24 

IV. To Love 35 

V. The Mood of Devotion 48 

VI. The Dead Masters of Life 55 

Vn. Taking Oneself Too Seriously 69 

Vin. Nec Timeo 78 

IX. The Revelation of Saint John the Divine . 90 

X. "Did You Get Anything?" 107 

XI. Con Amore 115 

Xn. "And to All Points Beyond" 130 

Xni. Some Friends of Mine in Paradise 146 

"Dear WUl Reed" 148 

O Crystal Heart! 150 

Albert J. Blackford 158 

Kmg David 159 

The Reverend James Boieourt 161 

Saint James 163 

The Reverend Wilbur F. Sheridan, G.G.M. . . 165 

Robert Forbes 174 

Bishop Charles W. Smith 176 

Frankim Hamilton 179 

Bishop Robert Mclntyre 182 

The Story of Margaret 185 

XIV. Careless Creek 199 

XV. Church Spires 220 

XVI. A Bunch of Wild Flowers 251 

They Wait for Me 251 

Skirting the Dawn I Saw a River Fair 253 

How Still Thou Art, O Quiet of the Dark!. . 253 

The Songs 254 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Hush, Hush; Why Weepest Thou? 254 

A Song 255 

Break Forth Into Fire 256 

If God Shall Lift Me from the Frozen 

Ground 256 

Great Silent Captain — Ulysses S. Grant 257 

A House Not Made with Hands 259 

The Port of Ships 259 

Blow, Heavenly Breath 260 

A Journeyer 262 

A Battle Cry 263 

And Trouble Faileth in a Sweet Content. . . . 264 
Just To Be With the World of Things and 

Men 265 

The Martyr's Answer 265 

Soul, Try Once More 266 

The Port of Days 266 

All Day With God 267 

When Anger Faileth Through Sheer Lack of 

Strength 268 

A Day to Dream of 269 

I Wonder Why 269 

I Cannot Hear Thee Speak, O Crystal Heart! 270 
*'They Have No Weary Nights in Paradise" . 271 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE^ 

When shall we learn, past ever forgetting it, 
that the commonplace is uncommon? The com- 
mon things must always be the chief delight 
of all such as have lived deeply. The shallows 
where ships cannot sail and wild waves cannot 
come ashore may have scant care for common- 
places, and call loudly for the unusual, but the 
deep places of the soul and deep souls are ever 
expectant for the invasion of the ordinary. The 
going far afield for pastures for the brain and 
heart is witless and is obsolescent. Let us re- 
joice out loud because of that. It was one of 
the strenuous achievements of Charles Dickens 
that he made romance a domestic matter. He 
did not foreignize the heart. He put it under 
every lowly roof. He did not take us into kings' 
palaces, where we would be intruders at the best, 
and endured though never wanted, but he put 
us in homely houses where we felt the eternal 
wonder of the hearts which God had made. 
It is not meant that Dickens discovered this. 
Of course not. All democracy was discovered 
to mankind by Christ. The cattle stall settled 
that, and the carpenter's bench settled that. 
Life has been content to king it in scant quarters 
since the epiphany of God. But Dickens made 

^Reprinted from Methodist Review, by permission. 

7 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

this democracy common talk. He was read as 
no novelist had been read. Not even Scott was 
everybody's novelist like Dickens. Scott thought 
too highly of gentle blood, so called. He was 
feverish when nobilities were near. He was dis- 
posed to drop a curtsy when the lords drove by 
not noting he was standing in the road. But 
Dickens knew the world had gone democratic. 
He knew the common man had come to stay, and 
that he was really the entrancing fiction-stuff. 
Goldsmith had found that secret when he wrote 
The Vicar of Wakefield. That preacher brother 
has had his way with a century and over, and 
has amassed a fortune of friends in all corners of 
this earth wherever kind hearts are esteemed 
more than coronets and gentle faith above Nor- 
man blood. The tearful story of the heart has 
not often been set down with such authentic 
immortality as when this vagabond son of a 
preacher found his tongue and pen babbling like 
a straying brook about the memories of his 
childhood and his heart. 

Really, it is not less than phenomenal, to such 
as find vital interest in fiction as an interpreter 
of eras and atmospheres, to see how present-day 
fiction has eluded riches and palaces and has 
invaded huts and houses of less imposing sort 
and has sat down to smile on simple porches and 
by everyday folks. I confess that it thrills me 
like the voice of a violin set to grief. What 

fiction talks of is very likely to be what people 

8 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

think of; for, when the last word is said, the 
novelists are of us and not apart from us, rather 
and decidedly a part of us. They feel as we feel. 
"The simple annals of the poor" was how Poet 
Gray characterized the everyday life of his time. 
I doubt you would find a poet in Anglo-Saxondom 
to-day to write so witless a phrase. We know 
better. I am not faulting Gray. I am praising 
the better eyesight of the century where God 
has given us our place of life. Life is, at its most 
ordinary estate, more fear-provoking and wonder- 
provoking than the advent and departure of a 
comet. Souls — any souls, all souls — hold us 
with their eyes. What the few are doing is never 
really important, but what the many are doing 
is the tragedy or the comedy of this world. The 
multitude, who dares to snub it? Why, the gray 
sea fitting its hands for shipwrecks, and its lips 
for blowing wild melodies — songs of death — and 
white faces floating like bubbles on the angry 
waves — that sea is not so fearsome a thing as a 
crowded street of a populous city. I was the 
other evening hanging around New York to see 
the huge hives of trade disgorge their multitudes. 
I stood and watched. I am a city man for many 
years, but profess never to see this drama with- 
out the wildest beating of the heart. When can 
I see a scene so molded in the hands of grim 
tragedy or smiled on and smiled into sunlight by 
laughing comedy as where the many are home- 
ward bound .f^ At morning, when they come to 

9 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

toil, there is less current, less mass, more severalty; 
but at night the rush from the business houses is 
as the outrush of pent-up waters. Homeward 
bound, swift step, eager or uneager faces, but 
always the tramp of souls; the mighty march 
of the lives of women and of men who make and 
unmake governments, and sow empires that are 
to be, or fire the shots that rake the decks of 
the ships of the days we shall not see but the 
future shall feel and fear. The uncommon com- 
mon man; the unusual usual; the tragic terror 
of the untragical everyday — have we caught that? 
Are we ever alert for the wondering eyes that 
grip our souls, and dry eyes that have stored up 
behind them whole Niagaras of tears, or common 
people who would at the touch of a cry of one 
they loved leap to heights high as the foot of 
Calvary's hill.^ Here where boils the volcano of 
populations, here genius may light its torch to 
higher flame than we have learned to read by. 
We are where the usual has come to the throne. 
What man can guess what lies in any other man.^^ 
What genius can decipher the hieroglyphics of 
pain which are washed by the sunlight of smiles 
on many and many a face.^^ We are not apt in 
such insight. These things are too high for us. 
We are born too late to forget the regality of the 
many. We are neck deep in essential and 
influential commonplace. The Angel of Lone- 
some Hill is scarcely a solitary instance. The 
occasion differed, but in many and many a 

10 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

woman's heart lies the everlasting love which 
needs but to be provoked to do such sublime 
things as that woman of prayer and gentle yet 
mighty hope. "We are such stuff as dreams are 
made of" — with the emphasis upon the "we" 
— is the true saying of that Shakespeare who 
knew so much of the depths of the human 
soul. We are the dreams which need only to 
be put to phrase to make an immortal classic. 

Not one step of the journey of life is uneventful. 
We are always confronted by the new and the 
alluring. It is like reading a play of Shakespeare 
— we are at every line stepping from somewhat 
to somewhat. We are never on drowsy ground. 
It is as reading all Sidney Lanier's poems. You 
pass from poem to poem, and each one is a hill 
top which sentinels a landscape. Sometimes the 
"Marshes of Glynn" are under the eye, some- 
times the "Fields of Corn," sometimes the "garden 
where the Master waits," sometimes the "Crystal 
Christ," sometimes the "Caliban Sea," sometimes 
the farmer Jones. I sit and think them all over. 
I think over the poems of any noble poet — say, 
like Longfellow, and feel my way across his 
soul or across the spirit of an era; I cannot be 
weary. I am always at a fresh rivulet shining 
from the hills. We never dare (for our soul's 
sake) let any poetry pass by unread. I have 
found it so in many years of reading poetry in 
newspapers and magazines. Not but that many 

a rhyme will be useless for soul-stuff, but you 

11 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

cannot tell. You might miss a revelation. It 
takes but a line to transfigure the world, and we 
must not miss that line. I set down here some 
poems I have clipped from passing pages in 
recent days; not wholly at random certainly, some 
of these being meet to be named great poems. 
To have missed any of these stanzas would have 
been an actual calamity. These poets had the 
sight of things not often seen, though they might 
have been often seen and by us all had we been 
watchers. We missed the vision, not because it 
paused not upon our hill to make us salutation, 
but because we were not watchers for the ad- 
vent on the hill. 

The Wind of Dreams 
by rosamund marriott watson 

Wind of the Downs, from upland spaces blowing. 
Salt with the fragrance of the southland sea. 

Sweet with wild herbs in smoothest greensward growing, 
You bring the harvest of my dreams to me. 

Wraiths that the scented breath of summer raises, 

Ghosts of dead hours and flowers that once were fair. . . . 

Sorrel and nodding grass and white moon daisies. . . . 
Glimmer and fade upon the fragrant air. 

I hear the harvest-wagons homeward driven 

Through dusky lanes by hedgerows dark with leaves. . . . 

The low gold moon, hung in a sapphire heaven, 
Looks on the wide fields and the gathered sheaves. 

Wind of the Downs — from cloud-swept upland spaces. 

Moorland and orchard -close and water-lea. 
You bring the voices and the vanished faces — 

Dreams of old dreams and days long lost to me. 

12 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

Love 
by john drinkwater 

Lord of the host of deep desires 

That spare no sting, yet are to me 
Sole echo of the silver choirs 

Whose dwelling is eternity. 
With all save thee my soul is prest 

In high dispute from day to day. 
But, Love, at thy most high behest 

I make no answer, and obey. 

The Hills of Rest 
by albert bigelow paine 

Beyond the last horizon's rim. 

Beyond adventure's farthest quest. 

Somewhere they rise, serene and dim. 
The happy, happy Hills of Rest. 

Upon their sunlit slopes uplift 

The castles we have built in Spain — 

While fair amid the summer drift 
Our faded gardens flower again. 

Sweet hours we did not live go by 
To soothing note on scented wing: 

In golden-lettered volumes lie 

The songs we tried in vain to sing. 

They are all there; the days of dream 
That build the inner lives of men; 

The silent, sacred years we deem 

The might be, and the might have been. 

Some evening when the sky is gold 

I'll follow day into the west; 
Nor pause, nor heed, till I behold 

The happy, happy Hills of Rest. 
13 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

Tears 
by lizette woodworth reese 

When I consider Life and its few years — 

A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun; 

A call to battle, and the battle done 
Ere the last echo dies within our ears; 
A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears; 

The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat; 

The burst of music down an unlistening street — 
I wonder at the idleness of tears. 
Ye old, old dead, and ye of yesternight, 

Chieftains and bards and keepers of the sheep. 
By every cup of sorrow that you had. 
Loose me from tears, and make me see aright 

How each hath back what once he stayed to weep: 
Homer his sight, David his little lad! 

Sleep 

BY PERCY MACKAYE 

Frail Sleep, that blowest by fresh banks 
Of quiet, crystal pools, beside whose brink 
The varicolored dreams, like cattle, come to drink. 

Cool Sleep, thy reeds, in solemn ranks. 

That murmur peace to me by midnight's streams. 

At dawn I pluck, and day ward pipe my flock of dreams. 

The everyday of our own life, when we gather 
the scattered days into a flock and fold them 
for a night and look them over one by one — 
which could have been omitted and our life not 
have been bereft? "They were grimly common- 
place," you say. "They were poor ditto marks, 
and their omission had left life without scar," 

some one tartly remarks. And are you very sure 

14 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

of that, good friend? Is not each part of a gray 
cathedral a non-negligible portion? Can any 
stone be spared from the arch and not leave that 
arch fissured with loss? We are too greedy with 
our words affirmational of identity of days and 
doings. All the hill ministers to the climb to the 
summit. Every pebble was partner of the crest- 
climb. May it not be so with life? There is no 
defense of the slurs of life's every day. By them 
we came to be the what we are. They ministered 
to one ennobling event; for we cannot argue that 
the soul as the soul is come to, by what paths 
soever, is a weird, inspiring arrival, baffling, be- 
fogging, shaming, sometimes, still wider than the 
span of the blue sky. The paths which led to it 
are eventful ways. 

Do we recall our childhood? The common 
ways, the schoolhouse where the whole world 
to us was at its widest; the fish streams, the 
swimming hole, the scramble up the banks, the 
dusty road where we with stone-bruised feet 
limped and still were glad, the spring where we 
loved to sprawl and drink, and drink and drink; 
the spankings wherewith our relatives regaled 
us with the remark that we never had one too 
many, the dark and its fears ("Night Fears," as 
Elia named them), the Sunday, the Monday, the 
Saturday for work and washing up (alas, the 
weekly washing up for boys!); the schooldays 
and the other days, the chores, the pailing of the 

cows, the plowing and the planting and the 

15 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

cultivating of the corn, the first suggestions of 
spring, the when we stopped the plowing mid- 
field to see the sullen splendor of a cloud burn 
low like a great ship in conflagration, the watering 
place for the horses, we sitting sidewise while 
they drank, feet to the fetlocks in the laving 
stream; the foddering the cattle in the winter 
when the bridle bits were frozen and our fingers 
were burned with the frost as with fire, the 
lonelinesses which came to childhood (so force- 
fully described by Henry van Dyke in "The 
Whippoorwill," a poem of enduring beauty) — 
these and a hundred thousand more we remember 
not, were making us. That was the thing we 
did not know and had no call to know, though 
we do know it now. These stupidities and hum- 
drums were the hardy makers of our souls. They 
were like fathers and mothers, little given to 
melodrama, but of such deep and beautiful 
necessity as makes us ever to think of them with 
a sob. The eventful uneventful days are ma- 
jestical, not mythical. They dig those wells of 
water on the desert stretches and turn a yellow 
sand-waste into eventful green. 

At Round Lake the even was come. A west- 
ward hill thwarted my view of the sunset, so I 
set out down the railroad track to catch the 
pageant I surmised was there. I always watch 
the sunsets, for so many never watch them. With 
me there is therefore a touch of the vicarious in 

watching broken sunsets waste or drift along 

16 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

the shadowing sky. Not but that I love them. 
Not but that I am always at the point where 
the uncle of the lad in Wilfred Cumbermede, 
George Macdonald's beautiful novel, leads when 
the twain watch the set of sun, "God, Willie; 
God." All sunsets wherever seen have that 
saying for my soul. But, as for that, what in 
all this wide world of beauty but says to me, 
child and man, "God, Willie; God".f^ God hath 
his exclamatories in the silent places of his world. 
So out I trudged, a visitant to another sunset, 
a pilgrim to an apocalypse. "God, Willie; God!" 
And there the sunset awaited me as if expectant 
of my arrival. "Sunsets are mainly alike," says 
some sagacious insagacity. My friend, thou 
errest, not knowing the truth. Sunsets are sim- 
ilar. In nature we never come closer than sim- 
ilarity. Identicals have no rest for their feet 
where God has had the doing of things. Men 
build houses which are identical, more the shame 
to such unimaginative builders. But God is 
different. God is Poet. So are the sunsets 
common, yet as new as the first evening which 
fell like dew upon the earth. On this sunset, 
bergs floated in the eastward sky, slowly, from 
some unseen, silent sea, and, shot through and 
through with baleful fire, they floated like glorious 
garnets along their skies. The west was islanded 
with clouds. Every cloud was glorified from be- 
neath by the wistful, lingering splendor of the 

sun. They shone, some of them like a reef in 

17 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

tropic seas, some of them mere islands, toy 
islands, dots only roomy enough to borrow glory 
from the departed sun. Some were like sea shells 
at float, some like ravelings from some garment 
of light, some like bits of wreckage shined on 
by a sudden light. But all wore a surprise of 
light. "The light that never was on land or sea'' 
was in this sky. "The Woods that Bring the 
Sunset Near" (what an engaging poem that is 
which Richard Watson Gilder at his poet best 
wrote down for us) were close beside, but were not 
needed to bring the sunset near; for the sunset 
itself was near. I could have thrust my hand 
into its wistful glory. 

One sunset, just one sunset from the thousands, 
yet an event for a lifetime memory. And every 
day has its sunset. 

No, we must not snub the daily doing, the 

homely commonplace. "Give us this day our 

daily bread," prayed the "Divine Hungerer." 

The commonplace of bread, the daily recurrent 

need and daily recurrent supply, are to be prayed 

for, therefore are we disqualified to despise the 

lowly commonplace. The earth worms plow the 

fields and predigest the ground. We may not 

disparage them, therefore. The viewing the 

commonplace as strangely uncommonplace will 

redeem life from bitterness and finicality and 

drudgery, and lift each happy day into a day 

of Advent and each night into a Mount of 

Beatitudes. 

18 



II 

TO BE 

For human beings, to be is birth plus con- 
tinuance. We were not: we are. A cradle waited 
for us; a cradle held us; a cradle holds us no more. 
We are en route. We came, no thanks to us nor 
consent of us; but we came; and, thanks to the 
kind God, we were welcomed. Kings are not so 
welcome as we witlings were. It was beautiful 
and is beautiful. The welcome .^^ Whose wel- 
come? Why, everybody's welcome. And they 
celebrate our birthdays — our mothers and fathers 
do. I have seen many mothers with their chil- 
dren on birthdays, all laughter and all rejoicing. 
Scant wonder that each child of us thinks of him- 
self over highly. We are educated to this conceit 
of thinking our coming the waited-for event of 
this big world. On the pier to wait our coming 
ship everybody seems to stand waiting and wav- 
ing hands of welcome, and practising half tearful, 
half tuneful lullabies; and all for us! All the 
world out to meet and greet us. All guns fire 
salutes and all the bells ring, and all we wee help- 
lessnesses and uselessnesses did was to "cuddle 
doon" with a spacious self-complacency as to say, 
'T am here; be happy." How sweet, how passing 

sweet is this welcome waiting us, all joy just be- 

19 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

cause we are come. God thought this out. Only 
he could. Birth joy is a commonplace, but such 
commonplace as makes angels sing. Those angels' 
night songs, all joy, on the birthnight of the 
Manger-Babe are in a happy way the joy songs of 
theirs over all babe births; we come, and Heaven 
is glad; we come, and earth is glad; we come, and 
mother is glad; we come, and father is glad — 
everybody glad because we are come! Happy 
day! 

Such as make difficulty of man's immortality 
should abate their fears. That is not our intel- 
lectual difficulty. The perplexing matter with 
which we are ever familiar yet never familiar is 
man's mortality. We are here; that is the inex- 
plicable fact. We are too glib in accounting for 
it, yet are we ever reticent in accounting for it. 
"We are here," says the repeater of platitudes, 
and, listening to his own voice, he thinks he has 
heard words. He has not: he has heard only 
sounds and they indeliberate and immelodious. 
To be sure, we were born. In what wise, however, 
does this explain anything.^ We who were not, 
are. Out of the void where mind was not nor 
heart, into a void where heart beats and breaks 
and loves. We who were wingless, into a space 
where, winged, we keep easy pace with rushing 
stars and palpitant dawns. Birth is as unfathomed 
as the sea about the frozen pole. We cannot deny 
birth, though to understand birth is not of us 

nor in us. 

20 



TO BE 

Living forever is no tax on faith. Could we 
but think at all, living at all is the tax on faith 
and the humbler of conceit. Our way is to take 
being as a matter of course. Better so. It is to 
that we must come at the last. All the rainbow 
flush of Wordsworth's "Ode to Immortality" 
means how little we know about our advent when 
we try our profoundest to know the most about 
it. We are the race of the unknowing. Our brow 
is un wrinkled because unperplexed. When we 
think about it we get muddled. All the broad- 
browed Platos have wrinkled foreheads, and 
wrinkled with the attempt to think out what 
cannot be thought out. We are rowers in a boat 
was how Plato thought of this; but how came the 
boat and how came we to be in the boat.'^ "We 
were," says Plato, "we had been dwellers in some 
sovereign un-noted star"; but not all the broad- 
browed Platos can know aught of it. Their 
guesses are as trivial as a withered leaf sport of 
the winds. We are not tall enough to look over 
the hills which rim our yesterdays. Birth is so 
common: birth is so uncommon. It is every- 
body's commonplace, but still stays the ever- 
abiding, stupendous, uncommonplace; and the 
pulses beat to tell the heart is unforgetful of its 
task. 

"Had we not been born," is a voice shambling 
as the jar of billows breaking when we are fast 
asleep and we but half awakened by their clamor. 
And not to have been ! Void, viewless, unaccosted 

21 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

of pain, unreproached by blame, unsinewed for 
the toil, unaffrighted by any fight, unscorpioned of 
conscience, not beckoned by love nor amused at 
any jest nor lashed to any floating wreck. Not 
to have been ! No cradle, no little garments made 
by gentle hands in love and prophecy of us, no 
mother eyes and hands and kisses, no father 
arms as strong as strength and gentle as a kiss — 
all missed! And to have been born, all these 
things had! Who knows about it? Who will 
ravel out this riddle? Who shall extricate us 
from this tangle where we find ourselves en- 
meshed? And all the answer life affords, and to 
now it is no answer at all, is, "We are here." 

"To be" — we cannot hinder that. Hamlet was 
not deep enough into his theme or he had not 
monologized "To be or not to be." To not be 
could not have hindered the being. We are 
launched boats at float upon the sea. The "to 
be" is inexplicable with such as be and inexorable 
with such as be not. They could not be. We are 
launched boats. We live whether or not we love 
living. We live whether or not we curse life. We 
are here. That is our modicum, our moiety, our 
penury, our plenty, our minimum, our maximum. 
Our hands, though not held out to receive alms 
as beggars do, are receivers of alms — the alms of 
nights and days and stars and fields and seas that 
beckon with the ships, and food and shelter from 
the storm, and gaudy raiment for the streets and 
laughter and the tattered raiment for a grave — 

22 



TO BE 

they are all gifts and we have had beggar's alms. 
We are mendicants of birth and all that inter- 
venes till death. 

If the sea be and we be upon it, shall the sea's 
breadth be a hard saying? Is the blue boundless- 
ness of ocean a more grievous saying than an inlet 
of sea? That it is the sea is the perplexing per- 
plexity, not where it ends. To haggle over im- 
mortality is petty. That is not the crux. The 
crux is mortality. It devolves on those who deny 
the deathlessness of the soul to do the arguing. 
Why should life quit? It had no call to begin 
but plainly has begun. Though we be dullards, 
we know that. Why should we not last? Why 
should not a sun shine on forever? Why should 
not the soul go on and on forever? Who is there 
to extinguish it? The light is lit. What wind 
should blow it out? 

"To be" is our vocation. To stay being, why 
is that a thought too winged? Who lit life's lamp 
may well keep it trimmed and burning. He hath 
not told us he would not. Rather into our dubi- 
tation comes the voice, "If it were not so, I would 
have told you." 

Hearken to Browning's "Paracelsus" saying, 

. . "What's life to me? ! 

Where'er I look is fire, where'er I listen I 
Music, and where I tend bliss evermore.'* 

To be is to be always. 



23 



Ill 

TO WORK 

"Opera" is a sturdy Latin word, sweaty as 
Samson after carrying away Gaza's gates and 
walking with them to the windy hill. It has 
suffered a change in that now it shouts at us 
from the theater stage in the character of music 
and has the strain of muscle of Caruso as he 
climbs laboriously to the top perch of the musical 
scale. I liked the word before it became ladylike 
with the rustle of silk and fan and buzz of very 
small talk. "Opera," the Roman word, sweats 
like a dying slave, dying truly, but working to 
the last hot breath and last hot sweat drop, and 
with him, life and labor expire together though 
with no cold bead on the brow, rather a boiling 
drop of hot toil barely completed. 

"The Works," we read and feel the sense that 
is on the world regarding the literary doings of 
our venerable masters of expression in words. 
The Works of Plato, the Works of Shakespeare, 
the Works of Samuel Johnson, but the works! 
What distinguished literary artists have ac- 
complished is thus set down, not as the leisure 
and rest of those ruddy brains, but as their sweat 
and muscle-strain. 
• Life climbs to work. When we have come to 

24 



TO WORK 

where it is worth while to be, toil bends its back 
to the burden. Great spirits eventuate in work. 
Is not this an entirely heartening consideration .^^ 
Pity is not for us who work. We are built as the 
world is built — to take the load. The butterfly is 
not so valuable as the mule. What the mule lacks 
in beauty he makes up in pull. The ship on the 
swift seas is not for frolic, but for burden-bearing; 
and it is worth while to recall that no pleasure 
yacht is as lovely as a far-going ship laden with 
merchandise for the laborious wharves of the 
world. 

Migrating birds going South do not sing. They 
take high flight toward long holiday. It is when 
the birds turn northward and on their throats is 
the gentle pressure of the northern air that they 
break forth into an irrepressible and inextinguish- 
able melody. Northward they go, not to dally 
nor to sing, but to build nests and on unerring 
wing to find a place to rear a brood to make other 
summers have their song. It is when birds front 
labor that they sing. We front the load as the 
storm petrel the seas or the pines front the dawn- 
ing to gladden with the luster of the day. Our 
worthwhileness is in our work. Not for leisuring, 
but for laboring, are we contrived with muscle 
strengthened by the lift and weakened by the 
monotony of doing nothing. Muscles are of no 
more worth than rotten twine until they are set 
to school to toil. "Jarge," in Jeffrey Farnol's 
The Broad Highway, is magnificent and majestic 

25 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

because his arm is grown so like mobile steel by 
the swing of the hammer through days on days 
where weariness delayed because strength was in- 
creased. Life's mighty men of valor never were 
clothed in fine linen. They were clothed in scanty 
garments sopping wet with salt sweat squeezing 
from flesh which counted naught worth while 
but robustious laboriousness. You cannot con- 
trive an *Tliad" with sitters-around for dramatis 
personce. The "Anabasis" sweats blood. The 
Katabasis drips with sweat as it makes arduous 
descent to call "The sea, the sea!" and creates a 
battle hunger for the sea. The heathen gods sat 
idly on a summer hill. The Christ worked in a 
toiling land until he died at his lift to sphere the 
world out of the dark and into an amazing light. 

Life turns its back on idleness and snubs it in 
the market place and on the street and in the 
halls of fame. The man who has never tasted 
sweat on his salt lips will have no statue built to 
him on any highway where mankind crowd to 
their day's work. "What are your Opera?'' saith 
Earth with sleeves rolled up and garment open at 
the throat and hands gloved in goodly grime 
earned in the workshops of giant industries. 
Work-clothes constitute earth's elegant apparel. 
Modern painting and sculpture have deserted 
kings' houses and kings' battlefields and have 
found the world's workshops and working women 
and workingmen the fascinations of civilization. 

Potato-diggers in the potato rows at sunset in an 

26 



TO WORK 

open field become a theme from which a modern 
poet in pigments has created a subtle glory for 
which riches have paid the price of a king's ran- 
som. "They that will not work shall not eat" 
was a preacher's notion of the treatment to be 
accorded the hobo. Certain it is that the un- 
working shall not live in any to-morrow unless in 
some piece of invective of satire. History damns 
the doless. Nothing is more certain. Bees (those 
canny folks, who with unwritten constitution gov- 
ern themselves) have a hard way of dealing with 
drones. They feed them, feast them, rear them 
as seK-sufficing aristocrats, and on a day, with 
poignant justice, proceed to slay them all. "Who 
will not work shall not live long," say the bees. 
They are witful folk withal. In all our human 
story the closing chapters have found no record 
of the folks that did not do. The doless have had 
swift chariots and drums and outriders and silken 
curtains and gaudy apparel, but though they 
guessed it not, were driven in their fine equipages 
to their grave, and no one was there to bury 
them. They rotted in their chariots in the sun. 
Life is a drastic medicine. It tastes like liquid 
fire. In the long run no favors are given. Men 
get what men earn. Some seem to be born to sip 
nectar like a butterfly, but they are ephemeral 
and vanish like a drop of dew upon a sunburned 
leaf. They leave no memorial. If a grave stone 
be set for them, no one reads the epitaph or 

pauses at the grave. Yet through centuries men 

27 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

have pilgrimmed to the graves of such as did 
things. The doers of mankind have everlasting 
memorials. No tablet of brass whereto Horatius 
Flaccus makes such reiterant reference is needful 
to keep their memories green. Nor need there 
be any wistful prayers as of Tiny Tim — "Lord, 
keep their memory green" — for God will see to 
that. Men go and will go to Devonshire to stand 
above the Devonshire country grave of sweet 
Robin Herrick. His work was singing songs that 
sing themselves. We go and will go while earth 
shall stay, to see the quiet house where George 
Washington sleeps quietly above a sturdy river 
swimming to the sea. His work is a Republic 
dedicated to immortality. Men go and visit a 
birth-house in Canada — because from that cradle 
went one whose work was to put the earth in 
speaking connection with itself — Bell was born 
there. Men journey little to the graves of kings. 
I have not seen men of sound mind that traveled 
to Windsor Castle to see the royal mausoleum 
there, but have known an exceeding great multi- 
tude go to City Road Chapel to behold where 
John Wesley, that man of vasty labors, sleeps. 
Time has an antipathy toward the doless folks. 
It is a bitter drink: and they in their time were 
merry folk. The beaux and belles pass away like 
a passing show and the toiling folks who farmed 
the field and built the homes where children cry 
and sing and play and who work for the better- 
ment of the world, the world, the bettered world, is 

28 



TO WORK 

their memorial. Ye shadowy ghosts in hell, who 
weirdly cry wild cries of wild despair, who are ye? 
Answer, "We be they that never toiled. Ghosts 
were we: ghosts are we. No substance had we: 
no substance are we," Wail on, wail, and pass! 
Labor, to an inattentive gaze, seems unsmiling 
and penniless. It walks a sullen road. Ditch- 
diggers have rheumatism. However, gaudy citi- 
zens of luxury have gout. Better rheumatism 
than gout. And, beside, the rheumatism gotten 
by digging ditches through a field to make it 
fertile for gentle harvests is honorably come by. 
But disease left as the poisonous residuum of 
luxury's ease and years-long debauchery is a blot 
in the 'scutcheon. Toil dares to have its biog- 
raphy writ. Vagrancy and sloth and indisposi- 
tion to bear one's share of the human load, cannot 
face the dreary page on which its dubious memo- 
rials are set down. 

William J. Locke's vagabond, in The Beloved 
Vagabond, is beloved because through gentleness 
of purpose and generosity of character and spirit 
of human brotherhood, he came out of vaga- 
bondage to the dear house where labor wearied 
the day and led it gladly to the night and where a 
woman and a babe took all the cark from care 
and weariness from toil. And Locke was the 
same author beautiful with "Septimus" possess- 
ing the minstrelsy of a brave spirit who forgot 
about himself being so sweetly busy remembering 

others. Such men dwell in the sunrise. 

29 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

Ulysses (Tennyson's Ulysses) says of his son, 
"He works his work, I mine." Bravely said, 
grave Ulysses! Thy work is written all in the 
"Odyssey." The sea and thou, thou and the sea, 
and so art thou sure immortal. Lowell and Long- 
fellow and Charles Lamb and Robbie Burns com- 
plain, betimes, at their routine. Yet did each, 
while at his bench of toil, achieve his immortality. 
But for the farming. Burns had written neither 
"The Mouse" nor "The Daisy," nor had his voice 
rung gladly across the sunrise land like a cuckoo's 
call. We are not oppressed by labor: we are ex- 
pressed by labor. The thing we are, no man 
knows until we work it out. It was the voyage 
disclosed Columbus was the discoverer and made 
him the admiral of the seas. It was the campaign 
that set Grant into deathless fame. We do well 
not to mutter at our work, but sing at it. So the 
sweet mothers of the world do, and the brave 
fathers. 

Etching is slow work, but is work worth while, 
for so the cathedrals stay when they are battered 
to debris and dust. Wood engraving is slow work, 
yet so Thomas Bewick is here though dead and 
dust; and a cult gathers about him. Those 
engravers on steel who, wooed by great Turner 
to take his "Rivers of France" and his "Harbors 
of England," replied and bade them "bide 
awee" — "allwee" until to some of us, those 
engraved Turners are gentle as a horizon of rest- 
fulness seen in the gloaming. 

30 



TO WORK 

We toil and are bruised by it, but in turn are 
made by it and make by it. Our sweat gives us 
affluence and influence and sets us in heavenly 
places of human regard. "He worked for men" — 
what think you, soul, of such an epitaph to give 
thee honorable immortality .f^ An oar found float- 
ing from a Norse boat ages since had engraved 
upon it this line, "Oft was I weary when I tugged 
at thee." But yet is there the suggestion of it all, 
and all poetry. The oar is poetry; the boat is 
poetry; the ocean is poetry; the voyage is poetry; 
the cargo, wife and child, and oarsmen, poetry. 
And now the floating oar which has the story 
of a brave and toilful life, is a poem no 
winds can blow away and no seas can float to 
oblivion. It is engraven on the recollection of 
the heart. 

I should be glad of heart and life to help labor 

know its own significance. Work is no grievance 

and no grief, nor is it a dullard sluggard's story. 

It is a chime of bells that swing and hearten all 

who hear. It is a laughter in the skies, a flight 

among the clouds, a rapture in the sun. When 

we recollect all we have done, how sweet the 

perusal! We were not parasites. We were not 

mistletoe but oaks, not blowing thistledown but 

strong-winged seraphs. Better a little life spent 

prudently and gently and gladly in making other 

people at home and in bringing to the hungry food, 

and to the houseless shelter, and to the thirsty a 

cup of water in the name of the W^ell of Living 

31 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

Water than to have been cradled in a golden 
cradle to be put upon a golden throne we did not 
earn and could not fill. 

Certainly life is a very self-respecting thing if 
so be it devotes itself to toil. The being able to 
look a body's self in the face when he passes the 
looking-glass is quite well worth working for; and it 
has to be worked for. We have pretty well passed 
the low ideal that work is degrading, yet have not 
quite reached the ideal that work is very en- 
nobling. We may still detect a semi-atrophied 
organ of the prig in our make-up in that we rather 
think it finer to have some one black our shoes 
than for us to black some one's shoes, or to be 
barbered by somebody than to have been some- 
body's barber. We should eliminate this little- 
ness. We should exorcise that devil — for devil it 
is. Labor is honorable and glorious. By our 
work we earn not alone our own self-respect — a 
thing highly to be desired — but the respect of 
others and their applausive gratitude. "You did 
this thing for us" is the high word earth has to 
utter to any of her daughters and her sons. To 
have earned a wage in the world, to have done 
something worth while, to have worked our pas- 
sage across the sea of life whether by trimming 
sails or keeping the watch or stoking the furnace 
or washing the decks — is all one. The ship which 
bears humanity as a cargo must be kept clean and 
bright and seaworthy. Only idiots and insane 

sail for nothing. Babes earn their way by their 

32 



TO WORK 

smiles at their mothers and their little fingers 
grasping their fathers' finger. 

Men walk. It is better to walk across a con- 
tinent than to ride on the trucks. It is better to 
go hungry than to steal the grapes. It is better 
to earn a crust than to possess superfluity every 
day and be a pauper. That lovely company of 
the world's millions of those who work constitute 
the most exhilarating scene this earth affords, so 
it seems and always has seemed to me. To work 
for wife or child or father and mother, for sick or 
needy neighbor, is as good as being in heaven. I 
should say better than being in heaven, but 
heaven is an unexpressed glory, so must be spoke 
of in terms of awe and reticence. To work sing- 
ing as the stream does — turning the wheel, as the I 
auto engine does when it settles itself to business 
of the running of the car, as car wheels do as we 
hear them in the night, as the burrs do in the 
great mills which grind flour for a continent — 
that is life. 

"What wrought you?" and the rose Teplied, 
"Flower and fragrance." "What wrought you.^" 
and the wheat replied, "Golden field and bread 
for the world's tables." "WThat wrought you.^^" 
and the sea wind said, "I drive the ships." "WThat 
wrought you?" and the mountain replied, "Thun- 
der and rivers and the forest pines and the far- 
fields blessed with drift of rain." "WThat wrought 
you?" and the ground answers, "I grow the crops 

that defeat hunger and nurture strength." "What 

33 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

hast thou wrought, O Christ?" He smiles and an- 
swers, "Quiet upon the windy seas and forgiveness 
for the wrecked heart, and redemption for a 
world of shamed and broken men, and peace for 
such as greatly need so that none need despair." 
And I would have my answer. I want to be able 
to give my reply in terms of serenity and life lest 
I be put to shame amongst the brawny universe 
of brawny souls. 

To work, not by compulsion, but by gleeful 
choice and high morals and to be sorry because 
the day grows late, verging toward sunset when 
rest must be near, though we be weary, but the 
work so invites us that we fain would hold the 
sun back from setting for a few hours more that 
we might proceed a little further with the goodly 
task with which the kind God had honored us, 
how should that fail of being the strange and 
dreamful thing, part human, part divine, which 
God's voice names "The Life Indeed"? 



S4 



IV 
TO LOVE 

Flowers presuppose the ground. Tliey are 
not creatures of the soil, but cannot live apart 
from it. They root in the earth though they do 
not bloom in it. They cannot invert this process. 
They never root in the sky. Some bit of ground 
must they possess for footing. Frozen it may be as 
the where the Alpine flora grows, but it is ground. 

To live is the ground of life. There all we are to 
be roots itself. By and by we shall change the 
place of rooting but never the fact of rooting. 
To live is to give all things regarding souls a 
chance. A cradle is the introduction to soldier, 
farmer, mariner, poet, orator, architect, dreamer 
of every purpureal dream which kindles black 
skies into a heavenly splendor. Life is our solid 
footing for every climb souls are to make, even as 
the ground is the point from which all mountains 
begin their leap into the astonishing azure. 

We live to love. Without loving, life were not 

worth living. This is the very last word life has 

to utter for our edification. To live loveless were 

worse than to die and worse than not to have 

been born. The dumb foxglove has all the aspect 

of a flower, but never becomes the flower it tuned 

itself to be. It never blooms and is therefore the 

pathos among flowers. The mercy of flowers of 

35 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

almost every hue and fashioning is that they 
bloom in such wild multitudes as to bewilder our 
thought and to swing even low minds into lofty 
comment. The wild profusion of blossoms is one 
of the reckless miracles which the Chief Gardener 
is ever flashing before our bewildered eyes. And 
then not to bloom! To be a dumb foxglove and 
when the attempt is made, not to stammer into 
the expression of its heart! To stay dumb when 
one opening of the lips would eventuate in music. 
Alas, can we name a bitterer disappointment which 
roots in the heart .f^ 

Not to love is the dumb foxglove of life. We 
are here, and here for love. Love ushered us into 
this wide sky, dawnlit and glad. It was the love 
of God. Love met us here with kisses and with 
songs, seeing we had a mother and a father. By 
love are we beckoned to walk, to speak, to try to 
do our best. We are led on by love and followed 
by love. All our schoolmastering has no other 
intent. For love were we born and to love do we 
make our journey. A cathedral is built for prayer 
and choiring of deep-throated bells and through 
the shadowing dusk the spires crowd up to watch 
through darkness for the dawn and to bid eyes 
which follow the leap of spire to fasten them on 
the face of God. We say of the cathedral it was 
built for God and man, to certify that man is 
meant for God and God hath died for man. The 
cruciform of the cathedral bears joyous attesta- 
tion to the mode God died and the spire is the 

86 



TO LOVE 

divine finger pointing men up where they are to 
live the wasteless life with the glad God. 

Thus is life meant for love. All its dreams, its 
anguishes, its fierce unrests, its far-going quests, 
its watchings for the dawn and then its watchings 
for the dark are wisps of cloud drifting along its 
upper sky showing which way the heavenly trade 
winds blow. 

To love! We are not spacious enough for our- 
selves. We are fettered in narrow quarters till 
love comes our way and shows us into spaces 
where the breadth and height we are may have 
their chance. They need space. Nothing is 
stranger in this world than this haunting sense of 
the insufficiency of one soul for itself. We should 
have thought that a soul had might to make its 
way alone like a lone traveler. What should a 
great life need of helpers? Can it not stand alone 
like solitary pines on solitary crests? We should 
have thought so. All we dare say on that head is 
that our supposition was only one other token of 
our ignorance. Aloneness is our death. The stars 
are gathered in shining companies. The flowers 
do group and swirl like wafting fires. The moun- 
tains seldom keep sentry alone. People are born 
villagers and can scarce be kept in a sequestered 
vale. We must see out or climb out or fare forth. 
"Outward bound" is written in our blood. We 
are lonesome till another comes. The very mole- 
cules of our human composition are clamorous for 

company. 

37 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

This is a weird cogitation. No ghost tale is 
companion to it. Poe's Tales, fearsome as they 
are, are not so weird. "The City of the Sea," 
"Ulalume" are not so strange as "Annabel Lee," 
whose utmost dream "Was to love and be loved 
by me." Why should a soul be slave to an im- 
mortal hunger.'^ Why may not a spacious life be 
in itself at home, and breathe freely, being alone.^^ 
Would not that be a larger charter and a worthier 
procedure? Can Shakespeare not dwell in him- 
self.'^ Does that vast immortality need company.^ 
Will not the drowsy night and jocund day "that 
stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops," and 
the stars "that in their motions like an angel, sing 
till choiring to the young-eyed cherubim" — will 
not these sujGBce this man of sunups and noons .^^ 
His sonnets make reply. Whatever their intent, 
their hunger is incredible. Not more do blue seas 
cling to the shore than this solar splendor of mind 
clings to some other than himself. His loneliness 
is on him as on Enoch Arden in his tropic splen- 
dor, breaking his heart in loneliness of love. 

The love sonnets of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, of 
Coventry Patmore, of Elizabeth Barrett Brown- 
ing, are starlit with this surge of soul toward soul. 
We cannot stay within the confines of our little 
life. Not to "some far off divine event" is it solely 
to which "the whole creation moves," but to some 
far off divine Person. Soul clamors for soul. As 
the flower to the sun, so soul blossoms for soul. 

Mrs. Browning's love sonnets I conceive to be 

38 



TO LOVE 

the highest point to which woman's soul has 
climbed in utterance. Women's souls have al- 
ways been climbing in action. Deed is higher 
than word. Howbeit, word is high when it is the 
answer for the deed. Poetry of action will aspire 
to poetry of speech. 

"Unlike are we^ unlike, O princely Heart! 

Unlike our uses and our destinies. 

Our ministering two angels look surprise 
On one another, as they strike athwart 
Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art 

A guest for queens to social pageantries. 

With gages from a hundred brighter eyes 
Than tears even can make mine, to ply thy part 
Of chief musician. What hast thou to do 

With looking from the lattice-lights at me, 
A poor, tired, wandering singer.'^ . . . singing through 

The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree? 
The chrism is on thine head — on mine, the dew — 

And Death must dig the level where these agree. 

"Thou hast thy calling to some palace floor. 

Most gracious singer of high poems! where 

The dancers will break footing from the care 
Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more. 
And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor 

For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear 

To let thy music drop here unaware 
In folds of golden fullness at my door? 
Look up and see the casement broken in. 

The bats and owlets builders in the roof! 
My cricket chirps against thy mandolin. 

Hush! call no echo up in further proof 
Of desolation! there's a voice within 

That weeps ... as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof. 

39 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

"I lift my heavy heart up solemnly. 

As once Electra her sepulchral urn, 

And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn 
The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see 
What a great heap of grief lay hid in me. 

And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn 

Through the ashen grayness. If thy foot m scorn 
Could tread them out to darkness utterly. 
It might be well perhaps. But if instead 

Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow 
The gray dust up, . . . those laurels on thine head 

O my beloved, will not shield thee so. 
That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred 

The hair beneath. Stand farther off then! Go. 

"Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand 

Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore 

Alone upon the threshold of my door 
Of individual life, I shall command 
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand 

Serenely in the sunshine as before. 

Without the sense of that which I forbore, . . . 
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land 
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine 

With pulses that beat double. What I do 
And what I dream include thee, as the wine 

Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue 
God for myself, he hears that name of thine. 

And sees within my eyes, the tears of two.'* 

The story of how "The Sonnets from the 
Portuguese" came to be called by that name 
reads like a tender story out of some classic 
fiction. This is the story: After the marriage of 
Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, one day 
she came coyly to her husband and with scant 

40 



TO LOVE 

words slipped into his hand a bundle of manu- 
script and ran away like a girl. Then the poet 
sat down and with radiant rapture read for the 
first time the love sonnets written by Elizabeth 
Barrett for her beloved Robert Browning. And, 
poet that he was, he saw on the instant that he 
had read literature which should not die, and 
when he hunted for his wife and found her and 
told her his joy in the poetry, and his wonder in 
it, he insisted that the sonnets should be called 
"Sonnets from the Portuguese" because of her 
love poem on "Catarina to Camoens." Thus 
after long silence below a whisper, these beauteous 
blossoms of a woman's heart (more woman wise 
than most women are), were put into the hands 
of him who created the love. 

When soul thus makes wild, fearless, yet ever 
fearful way to soul, we may well grow wild-eyed 
with a wonder touched with fear. The flight of 
wild birds toward a clime unknown is not so 
strange as this flight of soul toward a soul un- 
known. Restless till love comes, dying when love 
goes — that is love's age-long story as may be read 
in the post-battle scene in Tennyson's vivid drama 
of "Harold." 

It is not enough to be. It is not enough to 

work. To live and to work are sky-born when 

they are both rooted in love. No earth occur-: 

rence can afford the charm of the spectacle of 

any girl loving any man and going with him 

anywhere and calling nothing lost, though all is 

41 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

lost, in the rapturous finding of the beloved. We 
heed not such majesties, because they are familiar. 
We discredit our faculties when sights like these 
move us not to tears and wonder as a dayspring 
does not. All those poetries of our whole life 
sacred as a woman leaning about her baby's 
cradle, are squeezed from the cluster of our human 
loves. Men do bravely. The deed stirs us like 
battle shouts, though it were worth while in such 
cases to gravely weigh how such deeds of the 
work hands of our souls spring from the love of 
the heart. We love and therefore do. 

Heroisms are always followers of love. A man 
risks his life and loses it for his wife and child. 
He sprang forth hero at the behest of love. So 
Dante sprang forth poet. The goaded, glorious 
heart, the longing heart, the heart outward bound ! 

To love — and then we know what to live was 
for. Life is a ship and love the passenger. On a 
^ seething summer day when the muggy sunshine 
\ made the flesh sticky with sweat, a woman with 
gentle though weary smile and brave eyes that 
tried not to weep but did weep, and voice taught 
gentleness by weeping — sat in a car and told me 
how her husband lay asleep under sunny skies 
where she had carried him to make one more 
fight for life, and as he lay panting for the few 
breaths he was to draw, he insisted with her that 
she had had no wedding ring worth while when 
they were married, but now he must have a ring 
with a brilliant in it to put upon her finger with 

42 



TO LOVE 

his own thin, wasted fingers before he hasted out 
whither he knew he must quickly go. She tried 
to dissuade him, and to persuade him that she 
did not need it, that she had never missed it, never 
longed for it, that having him was enough, that 
their love had seemed to her to know no lack. 
But he wistfully said, "No, before I die I must 
put a jewel on your wedding finger." So he sent 
to a jeweler for rings and chose the one he wished 
her to wear and saying over again the marriage 
holy phrase, "With this ring I thee wed," placed 
it pantingly on her finger and smiled and kissed 
her tear-wet lips and passed out into the Blessed 
Land. And as the woman in her subdued voice 
soaked with tears told me the story, she pulled 
her glove from her sweaty fingers slowly, slowly, . 
and disclosed the ring saying, meantime, "I see \ 
many lovers and many women glad in their be- 
loveds, but I see no lover ever like my lover, and 
I turn away sorry for all the women who had not 
my beloved." 

I had read Tennyson and Chaucer and Spenser 
and Herrick and the madrigals from Shakespeare 
and all the Elizabethan dramatists, but not any- 
where had I read poetry exquisite as this — 
and the woman knew not it was poetry at all. 
That woman knew why life was made. She will 
not vex her brain on any speculative casuistry on 
life. She knows life's garden was given to grow 
love's holy flower. 

A man's daughter died and he became old in a 

43 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

night! Another man's son died, and in a few 
weeks, with no disease, he died. He was slain by 
his desolated heart. "Nothing counts," mum- 
bled a foreign-speaking stolid-faced woman, weep- 
ing in a railroad station on a windy plain, "nothing 
counts but your man." A fine-spirited, great 
heart of a man said to me: "I have no home 
now. She is gone." Love is the original poet. 
Love is the world's poet laureate. 

How all our living is bound together from life 
end to life end by our loves! Our mother's love, 
our father's love, which when we first awoke to 
any knowledge at all, were our possession. Love 
cradled us, hearts held us close, dear lips kissed 
us for fun — all for love. And through the years 
(when we knew not what love was worth or that 
it was of worth) love prayed for us, planned for 
us, dreamed for us, had its ache for us lest our 
leaf of laughter should be torn from our book of 
life or one petal be blown from our rose of joy. 
Love, all love, and we guessed it not, or, if guessing 
it, guessed it dimly. 

Love cuts deep like a heavy sword, but the 

wound is a possession. A happy father and 

mother sent out as the birthday notice of their 

daughter, "She is more precious than rubies." 

Little daughter, what wild welcome you have in 

that home, and you will not know of it until at 

your own heart you hold a daughter and sing over 

her for utter inexhaustible joy, "You are more 

precious than rubies." A grave is better than a 

44 



TO LOVE 

grim heart whose sod is not cut by any spade or 
crooned over by a breaking heart. Love costs, 
but is worth more than it ever costs. "I have 
lost my child," the sobbing woman said, when 
she would have taken the plate from the table 
where the daughter who should not soon return 
used to sit and smile and say gay words and 
wise. And the woman's husband said: "Dear 
heart, leave the plate be. It shall always stay 
there, ever to be ready when she comes." 

Life is a wild, wide water whereon to sail from 
sky to sky. From east rim to west rim, from 
gawdy morning to somber night, love's voice sings 
like a sea wind that hath all summer in its heart. 
Said an old poem read long since, 

"Love maketh life and life's great work complete. 
Some time will come the setting of the sun. 
And this brief day of the long work be done. 
There will be folded hands, lips without breath; 
But we shall have passed so — Love knows no death!" 

Love makes all life worth while. The solemn 
and tender voice of the benediction is, "The love 
of God." Who weighs that blessed utterance, or 
can.? If this universe of souls be shined across 
and through by love, it comes of God. We have 
caught love from God as we have caught life from 
God. The love of God is the one sure anchor 
which never breaks however hard the waves' 
mighty beat. The love of God abides and the 
universe has caught love from him. Scant wonder 
is it that love is passing wonderful. To live is to 

45 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

love, and to love may be to die. The mother 
sheep catches the moor storm on her side and 
makes a covert for the wee bit lambie. The 
mother bird grows brave as a soldier when danger 
threatens her young. All living things love after 
some meager manner or master manner. Dogs die 
on the graves where their masters lie dead. This 
love of God has filtered like crystal waters through 
the whole soil of life and springs up in many an 
unthought-of spot as a happy fountain shining in 
the sun. 

A blind preacher-poet, George Matheson, when 
his own heart was lovelorn, yet leaned hard upon 
the heart of God, whence streams the everlasting 
love, sang 

"O Love that wilt not let me go, 

I rest my weary soul in thee; 
I give thee back the life I owe. 
That in thine ocean depths its flow 

May richer, fuller be." 

And another preacher-poet, Charles Wesley, in 
that very great poem entitled, "Wrestling Jacob," 
shouts like a chorus of angels: 

" 'Tis Love! 'tis Love I thou diedst for me! 
, I hear thy whisper in my heart; 
The morning breaks, the shadows flee; 

Pure, universal love thou art; 
To me, to all, thy mercies move; 
Thy nature and thy name is Love." 

I know a picture which has walked into the very 
backlands of my soul. It is a picture of the cross 

46 



TO LOVE 

with the thorn crown on it and the anguish that 
shed blood. It is the cross of God. Before it an 
angel with strong, gentle face, and garmented in 
glistering white and wings hanging idle as if for- 
got, with left hand touching at the cross and eyes 
blinded by the love and loss unspeakable, the 
right hand flung in tragic terror across the blinded 
eyes. The love unspeakable blinded the angel 
like a freshet of suns. 

Once a man I knew, whose mother and whose \ 
only daughter had gone from him and had out- 
sped him into light, as he sat holding the quiet 
hand of his dying father who could no longer 
speak, but could intelligently hear and understand, 
said, "Father, when you get home, give my love 
to mother. You understand, father .f^" And the 
dying father, who could not speak, said "Yes" 
with his eyes. Continued my friend, "Father, 
kiss Olive" — his dead daughter — "for me when 
you see her." And the dying father smiled and 
nodded assent with his eyes. The son leaned and 
kissed him on the lips and his father went safely 
out to do his errand. 



47 



THE MOOD OF DEVOTION 

*Tn everything give thanks." 

Query: Have we not set the song of the Chris- 
tian Hfe too much to the tune of difficulty, dan- 
ger, and sorrow? "In everything give thanks," I 
am pretty certain, will, in the multitude of in- 
stances, be translated as meaning that whatever 
difficulty or distress enters your life, be of grateful 
mood. Do not murmur. Be glad whatever 
roughness the waters wear as we voyage across 
their uncertain billows. 

I am certain of two things in this matter. First, 
that this is how this Scripture is pretty generally 
viewed, and, second, that this is not what it does 
actually mean. It does mean that, but it means 
indefinitely more. A farm is on a landscape, but a 
farm is not the landscape; and he who confounds 
farm and landscape is not seeing things as they 
are. Difficulties are to be encountered and sor- 
rows are to be met, and they are to be met with 
the mood of manly and womanly resignation to 
the larger issues of life, which is always resigna- 
tion to the wide- working will of God. But that 
we are to be grateful for the clouds rather than 
the sunrise and the noon and the blessed open 

sky is to me absurd and a listless interpretation 

48 



THE MOOD OF DEVOTION 

of the good God our heavenly Father. To be 
glad on a holiday is as devout as to be sad on a 
funeral day. We shall need to reset our estimates 
of God and his will concerning us before we are 
in harmony with his mood. He is the glad God 
of the out-of-doors and the happy singing things 
whether they be birds or children or women or 
strong men. This anaemic notion of religion is 
unwholesome because it is untrue; God gives it 
no assent. 

A good man and great said this: "In everything 
give thanks." Nobody but a good and great 
man could have said it. The sentiment is like 
Mount Lycabettus, from whose top all of his- 
toried Greece lies under the eyes without straining 
an eyeball. All life lies at the base of a mount of 
vision and of praise like this: "In everything give 
thanks." The fact which is meant to be lifted 
into light at this moment is that there is a devo- 
tional element in all things whatsoever. We say 
grace before meals, except we be heathen. We 
should say grace before labors and battles without 
or within and reading of books and taking of jour- 
neys and husking corn or going to picnics or a 
stroll through sunburnt fields for the sheer love of 
the crisp grass under foot and the hot sky over- 
head. Blessings lie about us thick as blades of 
grass along a Kansas hill. 

We do narrow beyond the permission of God 

this thought of devotion if we must be at church 

or prayer meeting or at family prayer to be de- 

49 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

votional. Those places and occupations are greatly 
good,, but they do not monopolize the moods of 
devotion. The devotional frame is the deep con- 
sideration. Are we open to devotion for all things 
as Paul was.f^ Saint Francis was not the last man 
who was devoutly grateful for the birds nor who 
counted them his brothers. It is meet to give 
thanks for the bird voices, and a good way to 
give such thanks is by listening to the voices. 

That is worth weighing. To love things enough 
to give things heed is a mood of gratitude, whereas 
not to care enough for things to notice them is a 
first-class specimen of ingratitude toward God and 
his doings. The cricket's chir is a species of 
poetry which may well set the heart singing after 
its fashion too. Such a little warmth makes the 
cricket set his heart to song. Were we as good at 
the voicing of our gratitude as the cricket of the 
hearth, what a shout of chorusing would the great 
God hear from men! 

The religious nature is wiser and wider than 
many religious, folk are given to supposing. Chris- 
tianity is generosity. "Thank God!" How often 
have I found my own given to that gust of grati- 
tude — "Thank God!" And I am not slow to 
believe God hears such prayer and smiles with 
gladness to hear it. Why should we not give 
thanks for the finding of a wild flower, or the 
striking gracefulness of a child at play, or the toss 
of apple branches lit with bloom, or the blue jay's 
note with its musical unmusicality, or the flight 

50 



THE MOOD OF DEVOTION 

of a hawk along ranges of the sky, or the baffling 
motion of a prairie hawk with its vagrancy allur- 
ing as the pursuit of shadows cast by a wild wind- 
cloud? 

Must a body's prayers be said only in the neigh- 
borhood of the Bible book and the preacher and 
the prophet's words? I resent the suggestion. It 
is not wide like God, and it is not kindly like the 
Christ who said thanks over a wild flower on a 
windy plain. God is bigger than we know, and 
Christianity is as big as God. I will venture that 
Paul, when he had his cloak and books and parch- 
ments back, said his prayers, not more over the 
cloak which he, a forgetful brother with no wife, 
had forgotten at somebody's house, which was so 
necessary to house his shivering body in his prison. 
He said, "Bless God for books." Did he say that? 
Depend on it he did. Else what does he mean in 
saying, "In everything give thanks"? If he ad- 
vises gratitude and grateful prayer in calamities, 
how much more would he have expended thanks 
on all such things as gird life and enlarge it and 
extend its paths out to all skies which hold their 
beckoning lights to beckon thoughts and desires 
outward bound? 

No, secularities are just theme for praise and 
prayer. We have no call to ask for things for 
which we have not call to answer to God in spon- 
taneous words of thanks. "I thank you" is a 
phrase which the debonair use frequently. Cour- 
tesy is a good habit for a body's own sake. To be 

51 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

genteel is a soul-instinct of fineness, and if a man 
or a woman lived alone and brake bread with 
himself (although such way of living is not neces- 
sary nor to be desired; if one is alone and has no 
relatives, then should such a one borrow some 
child, or, better, some old homeless body, some- 
body human, not feline nor canine, to keep alive 
the humanness in one's own soul), he would do 
well to say, "I thank you" when he passes food 
to himself, for so would the method of good man- 
ners be kept alive and the social impulse would 
be hearkened to. 

And if the giving thanks to people for all trivial 
services be the easy test of the gentleman or the 
gentlewoman, much more shall the giving thanks 
to God for all sorts of benefits be good manners 
toward God. How shall the ungrateful toward 
God think themselves genteel .^^ 

On a radiant day in August, when the windings 
of a quiet river are lit goldenly with the tawny 
green of swamp grasses which answer to all winds 
with weary reluctance, and the pines are black, 
blinding black in the light, and the upland mead- 
ows lean landward and lakeward and clasp hands 
with the yellow dunes of shifting sand, and across 
it past the lift of the dune-top is the sweet surprise 
of the blue waters of the lake, shoreless on the 
horizon, and the killdee calls wailingly and the 
swallow dips with grace unphrasable to the surface 
of the stream where my boat floats, and life is very 

wonderful and God is very nigh — why is not this a 

52 



THE MOOD OF DEVOTION 

good place for devotion? Why should some dull- 
souled sectary with dull prudery of religion think 
that reading a page from Scripture is more godly 
than reading this illumined page from the Scrip- 
ture of the living God who has writ in sunlight 
and laughter and the flight of birds as certainly 
as he has written in the Holy Book? 

All things beckon good spirits toward God. I 
thank the Lord for the frozen wintry shore, and 
the summer pools where the rushes grow, and the 
way lazying uphill through the dust, and the list- 
less cattle in the shade, and the hurrying of little 
chicks to the warning of the mother hen whose 
danger-call sends them all scudding to the haven 
of her sheltering care, and the sound of the winds 
through the grasses, and the happy face of the 
child, and a mother's look on her children, and a 
man at the plow or trowel, and a child running 
to meet the father coming home at dusk and 
getting an early kiss, and an old mother coming 
on a train from afar to meet her son whom she 
has not seen for long, so long, or a gravestone 
with the blessed inscription, "Asleep in Jesus," 
or a girl reading a letter from her lover, or some- 
body reading a novel of purity and beauty like 
Crockett's A Lilac Sunbonnet. Why not be de- 
vout over these? 

Are we to think it is more pious to pray on the 

cold flags of a dark cathedral than on the sunny 

floor of God's cathedral of the sky? Really, which 

is more accepted will not make long parley in the 

53 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

heart which devoutly loves God, the God of every 
lovely and every living thing, or such as watch 
the out-of-door Christ in his goings through the 
meadow lands and across the winding hills or by 
the sea where the fisher boats gather at the gray 
of every morning, or through the wheat fields in 
the ripening grain. Where he was at home and 
at prayer we may safely be at prayer and at 
home. 

"Father, I thank thee," says the Christ; and 
"In everything give thanks," says his brainiest 
follower. And for one I will take this advice and 
will find provision for devotion in everything — 
books, folks, church, labor, song, tears, and cares. 
And for the least and the largest to the God and 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ will make my 
adoration for the Christ, my Saviour and my 
King. 



S4 



VI 
THE DEAD MASTERS OF LIFE 

How mysterious and moving a fact it is that 
the chief masters of life are the dead! Death 
blows its wind in the face of life to make life more 
vital. The mighty living hands are dead hands. 
From beyond the grave come those voices whose 
mystic music lifts the tune for the living world. 

To an extemporaneous opinion, it appears that 
life must be ministered to by life, and by life only. 
The schoolmasters must be flesh and blood, color 
and speech, visible and obtruding and journeying 
along the busy thoroughfares where life makes 
laughing way among the multitudes. That is how 
things plainly seem at the first intake of the 
breath of thought. How else.'^ Who could be 
our rowers at the oars of the boat of life save 
living hands of sinewy fingers and gripping palms .f^ 
We must see, hear, feel the hot breath of our pre- 
ceptors in the majestic episode called life. 

We cannot extemporize on the main matters of 
the soul. We are bound to go to school to learn 
how things are. A priori has been taught modesty 
in part; and a posteriori is yet to be taught mod- 
esty. Experience must not be so loud in its table 
talk as to drown out the voices of dreaming. That 
is true. As is usual, truth lies somewhere be- 

55 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

tween. Even poets must shake hands frequently 
with Hfe before they can stammer out the drama 
of Hving. You cannot wholly prophesy life nor 
can you wholly experience life. The vastness of 
the thing is its impediment. How entirely reason- 
able that those landscapes which shall impress us 
and compel us must be those whose skies bend 
very blue above us and those whose fields lie 
very green around us and whose waters fling back 
cloud for cloud of the high bending heavens. 
This self-evident consideration is battered to 
pieces like a German offensive by things as we 
find them. The River Duddon over which Words- 
worth has expended such a wealth of sonnet 
sequence cannot compare with Shakespeare's 
Forest of Arden. The River Duddon fades from 
the landscape of hill and stream while the Forest 
of Arden blows playful shadows across our faces 
and our hearts undyingly. Things we never saw 
are more visible than the things we always saw. 

By an unanswerable logic we shall be led by 
hands warm at the palm and palpitant. And 
when we come to take the path and wind across 
the lea to neighboring wolds we find our fingers 
gripped by hands dust so long ago the marble 
monuments must be invoked to tell when they 
dwelt under the azure sky and felt the passing 
of the wind and viewed the wide-eyed daisies 
looking wonderingly at the sun. By the appeal 
to life, our chief masters are the dead. And if any 

should shudder at this as if the thought were 

56 



THE DEAD MASTERS OF LIFE 

uncanny, let that one pause and recall how the 
father long since passed into the spacious silence 
named eternity is not less present to the heart 
than when in the fields or along the streets he 
worked to earn his family a livelihood. That 
sweet mother who sang about the house at work 
in other days sings now a sweeter song about the 
heart though she has years ago invaded the terri- 
tory of eternity. This is no uncanny considera- 
tion. Rather it is a consideration which links 
life and death in a beautiful fraternity which may 
well be called immortality. The dead are still 
kinsmen of the living. No alabaster bowl of 
precious ointment is broken when death saunters 
past. With his rude clutch he did but let the 
precious fragrance out to sweeten all the air. 
WTiat is history save the land of the dead.? It is 
the Land of Things That Were. And when we 
need to walk in the To-day of things we scan the 
Yesterdays of things. Perforce 'tis so. We do 
not read history grimly: we read it intrancedly. 
It is that place where voices which ought not to 
be silenced remain unsubdued; where the rasp and 
squeak are taken from the chariot and all we 
perceive is the chariot racing toward its goal. 
The things that stay are the things that count. 
Action is perpetually vital. I was the other day 
reading a volume of Bancroft's History of the 
United States, selecting a volume at random, not 
as reading the series as I had done before, not 

beginning at a beginning and passing wisely 

57 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

through to a conclusion, but picking a volume up 
to drink from as from a sudden wayside spring. 
And familiar as I am with that really noble his- 
torian, the thrill upon me by rushing into the 
thick of things (the Revolutionary War) where we 
were busy telling England to stay away from our 
shores and vex us no more with its peremptory 
policy, was so like fire running its naked fingers 
over my naked body in these days when England 
and France and America are grinding bloody 
shoulder against bloody shoulder for the rescue 
of the world from infamy. This bleeding experi- 
ment is tutored by a bleeding yesterday. Dead 
as regards all participation, alive in inculcation as 
the fierce oratory of battling guns. And the thing 
we learn from this Bancroft battle volume is that 
right will win the war. Temporary defeats are 
trivial things when weighed in the balances of 
God. He wants and means well by this world 
and will not sit a calm, careless spectator while 
evil weighs down with its infernal bulk and 
crushes the world and smothers it. We must 
shake hands with the dead to know the touch of 
the hands of the living. These times making faces 
at the future like grim gargoyles from a roof be- 
come less fearful and fearsome when viewed at 
long range, and so viewed they are perceived to be 
specters of things which suffer no incarnation. 

The parallel, the fussy little German reincarna- 
tion now making faces at the whole world, will in 

due time become a perpetuated grimace which 

58 



THE DEAD MASTERS OF LIFE 

will scare nobody and will mainly serve to make 
everybody laugh. This is the prince of The- 
Things-That-Ought-Not-To-Be and That-Must- 
Not-Be and That-Will-Not-Be. George III and 
his minions who assented to his crazy, despotic, 
and distracted word were then a menace, now 
only an infelicity. What George III never dreamed 
to do he did, namely, enfranchise America and 
make the United States a co-custodian of the 
liberty of mankind. The words of men dead 
give an information totally different from their 
living intent. All those dull stratagems of the 
king's Cabinet, the Lord Norths, the Earl Butes 
and the Lord Howes and Cornwallises, seem now 
the fussy blotters of a page which in our day 
England would wipe clear by an alliance for per- 
petual freedom. Once, these paraded showy and 
periwigged as the clinging tapestries on the walls 
of a palace, now, discriminating descendants de- 
sire to hang some tattered finery over their faces 
so they may be forgot. 

Plainly, the dead days are very vital days. We 
shall steady our nerves by an appeal to those 
programs of battle and defeat when men tramped 
stolidly to defeat like Washington's retreat from 
Long Island, not knowing into how hard a pass 
they were to come. Their ignorance is our en- 
lightenment. We may well learn from them not 
to be scared, but to be awake. They will keep us 
from neurotics. They steady us by the sense that 

there is an Overruler of rulers. The great deeds 

59 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

last; and Hunism then or now has no power to 
frustrate the grace of things. Some crossing of 
the Delaware will bring their frightfulness to ca- 
tastrophe, and they shall whimper back into some 
fierce jeopardy to try to cleanse their hands of 
the horrid blood, not of battle, but of murder. 

As I consider the way my life has taken through 
these years, it is an astonishment to perceive how 
much my mind and career have companied with 
the dead. While the touch and glance by the way 
have kept the laughters alive in my soul, and while 
I knew my contemporaries were the living folks 
among whom I dwelt, I now perceive how I was 
constant contemporary of the dead. Not those I 
met on the street were my familiars as those I met 
at night with the lit lamp among my books. Long- 
fellow died when I was just come to college, but 
dead and buried he was seen a friend as when at 
Craigie House he saw the River Charles go mutely 
by. His voice lost none of its sweet wistfulness by 
death. 

I recall once when speaking in New York city 
at a banquet I was co-speaker with Richard Wat- 
son Gilder, that slender reed which the winds 
blew upon to create sweet melody and illustrious 
music. Then, a brief time after, he passed to the 
Land of Peace, of which he had never before been 
citizen, though I never felt to weep at his death; 
for his autographed Poems in my library wear the 
touch of his hand like the lingering of a kiss on 

our lips from one greatly beloved. God's Acre is 

60 



THE DEAD MASTERS OF LIFE 

not only the most populous city of our world, but 
holds the most vital population. They have no 
sick nor tired days : they know no bleak east winds 
nor foggy coast: they encounter no burning day 
of summer drought-winds; their leaf also shall not 
wither, and whatsoever they do shall prosper. If 
I or any were to chart the immense intrusions on 
his soul, those mighty moods like the vast sea at 
tide, he should be compassed about by voices 
which in the tables of mortality were scheduled 
among the silences. Their voices trumpet most. 
Their bugles are not as Tennyson's "Horns of 
elf land faintly blowing," but as those trumpets 
set to blow the reveille of resurrection. 

What this amounts to clearly is argument for 
immortality. Death does not quiet things down: 
death tunes things up. It tones things up. Genius 
dies, and when his living face vanishes from the 
ways he often trod then are his lineaments hung 
out on the wall of the sky so all persons along 
their busy ways may, without stopping to look, 
behold them. Who goes out to the graveyard 
may label his excursion "A visit to the deathless." 
Life is so prodigal an exploit as to be impossible 
to be got rid of. Job of the desert spoke of things 
leaded in the rock forever and my lord Horace 
Flaccus, poet friend of Mycaenus, talked of tables 
of brass. He of the desert and he of the city had a 
mind on the continuing of oneself, a grave en- 
deavor in spite of things, whereas the scheme of 

things seems to be fashioned to preserve self by 

61 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

the nature of self. Grant endures solely by being 
Grant; soul endures by being soul. Such as stam- 
mer out caehinnatory words about "We cease 
from life" do slight credit to themselves, seeing 
they have fattened themselves on dead immortals. 
Those who read Shakespeare to marvel at him 
and rejoice in him are poor arguers for a day of 
death. The dead who being dead yet speaketh 
are the dead who did not die. They fooled us by 
a funeral into stolidly believing them dead. A 
funeral is a theatrical spectacularity, a bit of 
gaudy pantomime which gulls the gullible who 
bromidically rehearse, "What I have seen I 
know." It is a pity to be so witless and dupable. 
Does not the firmament of the world's majesty 
continually resound with the diapason, "The im- 
mortal dead," which, when we weigh the mean- 
ing of words, expresses a contradiction .^^ "Im- 
mortal" belies "dead." The deathless dead — yet 
think what a cavalier way to accost death. Really 
we should be more polite to so ancient a potentate 
as King Death, though now that we think of it, 
he has never been other than unmannerly with 
us; so rub his name off the page of the Doings of 
the World. Read the births and omit the deaths. 
They do not count. Only births count. 

It is a thing to make a soul delirious with joy 
to consider this continued springtime of life and 
to elucidate it with ourselves is setting down our 
mortal helpers to our souls. Father, mother, 

daughter, son, husband, wife, whose wings made 

62 



THE DEAD MASTERS OF LIFE 

momentary breath upon our cheeks as they fared 
forth as going from where to where. And we shall 
not write far but that as we turn eyes back over 
the pages of our lives we shall find page after 
page scribbled over with the names of the dead, 
the dear and sainted dead. What high thing have 
I set quiring in the choir loft of my soul which 
has not been told me or been illuminated for me 
by the dead deathlessnesses.^^ 

Have we recalled that our American Emerson 
— ;Our American solitary — had thousands of quo- 
tations on his lips.^ Yet had we counted him 
original. He was out under the sky when the 
comet passed over and the dust of that far pas- 
sage sifted on his speech. He talked much with 
the dead when he walked alone in the woods; 
and in the wandering Concord ways the yester- 
days took liberties with him. What he took to 
be a pine tree's melancholy harping was the vesper 
murmuring of the celestial dead. John Burroughs 
is alive, Richard Jefferies is dead — I speak after 
the manner of men — yet do we know it or imagine 
it.? The voice of Jefferies sounds as near and as 
clear as the voice of Burroughs. No rasp of death 
is in the throat of "The Story of My Heart." 
Both lovers of wild things are hearty and both 
are out of doors, where we wish to be with them. 

Tiplady's books of battle. The Cross at the 

Front, and The Soul of a Soldier are not more 

voices of battle than Hankey's A Student in 

Arms; and Tiplady is Methodism and here in the 

63 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

flesh, and Hankey was Church of England man 
and dead in the flesh, slain on the windy field of 
war, but lustily immortal in the spirit. And that 
extraordinary chapter in Empey's Over the Top, 
entitled "The Coward," which records a great 
soul tragedy leaping into the very noon of a great 
soul conquest and the writer thereof must be set 
down as a servant of all in the writing of it, never- 
theless not more resonant with the rich tones of 
life than Hankey 's The Black Sheep. Both stories 
laugh out loud, shout out loud with redemption. 
They clamor hope like a company of angels. 

Clearly, we are kinsmen of the dead. Our 
playfellows are the children of eternity. This 
radiant springtime is on us where no autumnal 
tears drip on the cheeks, but only vernal youth 
and shaping of new leaves and the putting forth 
of fresh blossoms, beautiful as immortelles of 
the peaceful land which lies past all stormy 
waters and rude winter winds. Counting our 
rosary, one will tell off the beads which have the 
spring beauty of the fadeless amaranth, the dead 
who are the surest of our contemporaries. 

Andrew Lang has a volume entitled Letters to 

Dead Authors; only they are not dead. Dickens 

is not dead. Thackeray is not dead. Tennyson 

is not dead. We must have noted how in our 

passing days these men start out on the open 

road in the most unexpected places and call us 

to a standstill for sheer delight in the meeting of 

them. I defy you to say to their faces, "Ye are 

64 



THE DEAD MASTERS OF LIFE 

dead," for should they not be able to retaliate, 
"Ye are the dead, we be the ever-living"? Jan 
Ridd is not dead, nor Lorna Doone, nor dear Mr. 
Lorry, nor Miss Pross, nor Lucie Manette, nor 
Sydney Carton; Henry Esmond is not dead, nor 
that sweet love who became his wife. Laura is 
not dead, nor Beatrice. Chaucer is not dead, nor 
Dante, nor great, grave Milton. They died, but 
abide the great dead Masters of Life, which 
means they are not in the great way dead at all. 
They are triumphantly alive. They seem so 
greatly alive as that beside them we lesser men 
in life seem peripatetic corpses. 

I have as a birthday gift from the woman I 
love most in the world The Stones of Venice, in 
three volumes, dignified, edifying, and they lie on 
my library table one on one like Venice stones, 
wrought majesties grown old, and each volume is 
autographed by the great master who penned the 
aesthetic and ethical story recorded here. John 
Ruskin's hand has traced this name; and his 
hand, his waiting hand, has pressed this page, 
and his name perfumes the page like "Rosemary 
for remembrance" — (Thank you. Will Shake- 
speare). I cannot feel Ruskin dead with these 
tumultuous books in my sight and my touch, any 
more than years agone when as a lad I met this 
genius of soul and heard his challenge for the 
seeing heart and the radiant delight in things 
visible and tangible. He haunts me now as he 

did then and I opine he will forever. He seems 

65 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

so alive and well and wonderful. I thank God 
for him when I pray. He still loves the sea and 
the clouds mid-sky and the running water and the 
moody sunset and climbing mountain unafraid of 
dawn, and the gray cathedral walls and mute 
tower smitten with a hurricane of bell-voices full 
of prayer. Ruskin has no past tense; he dwells 
in a resistless present. No living master voice 
thrills me now as this dead master of Life. All the 
living poets, great and greater and less great (and 
I fault them not nor flout them) , Noyes and Pea- 
body, and Bridges and Oxenham, and Staeger, 
and Lindsay and Masefield and the rest, I cannot 
reckon equal to one triumphant blast on his gold 
trumpet, which Robert Browning gave when he 
wrote "Prospice," which for sheer triumph over 
death in these days sown to death and beyond 
death and glorious vistas, shining away into 
eternity, outsings all present voices. And the 
dead.^ Lord, thou knowest. I get them mixed 
so, these living and those dead. The breath of 
the dead is hot as fire upon my cheek and heart 
and their voices haunt me like the trumpetings of 
stars. So vigilant, so masterful, those men of old 
who refuse to grope along the crypts of death yet 
walk like shining waves across a shining sea under 
a summer sky. 

In a twilight hour when the day's voices were 
becoming inarticulate, if a body were to begin to 
con over with a lifetime friend, of his heart, his 

friends of a lifetime, dwelling on names lovingly 

66 



THE DEAD MASTERS OP LIFE 

and loiteringly, as if he kissed lips he loved, would 
he, enumerating his friends, omit the names of 
those who had passed out barefooted and silent 
as the footsteps of stars? Nay, he would include 
them. His heart would make no mistake nor 
fumble once. If he recalled afterward his twi- 
light conversation, his head might mistake some 
name then uttered, but his heart would correct 
him. His heart would not permit the crude edit- 
ing his brain would give. The heart is right — it 
has that habit. Our friends are all in the summer 
land of those who wander to and fro by stream 
and sea and search of mountain for the dawn. 
Sunlight or starlight, it matters not to those dead 
masters of life. So, thinking vagrantly and very 
tenderly about our soul helpers, loving them as a 
man might love his birthplace and to find how 
little odds death makes; for we think them gone 
but to find them here — and a sweet and wistful 
company they are who help us now as they helped 
us then, and smile the while. This quest for the 
awakeners of the soul casts a noble shadow. I 
know not any Alp or Rocky or Himalaya to fling 
shadow so preeminent and conducive to adven- 
ture. The shadow death casts is life. We are 
compelled by the high compulsion of the un- 
deniable vitalities to affirm the masterfulness of 
the dead. So vital they are, they will not taste 
death. They spit it out as a bitter herb. As 
they were at their best when they were with us, 

they stay. Charles Lamb and Sam Johnson and 

67 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

gaunt Lincoln, and ocean-voiced Tennyson, and 
calm Whittier, with his vesper sparrow sadness 
in his throat, are not dead but sleeping, or dead — 
and masters of life. 

The putting of the thought is inconsequential. 
The thought is consequential, and owns all the 
skies above the soul. And out of this comes the 
conclusion that, dying, we shall not disappear 
but shall step out in a ministry immortal, shall 
walk by wings as angels have learned to do, shall 
gather no dust of passing on the garments of 
journey. We shall go far journeys on smiling 
wings and bear in either hand a lamp to put at 
any unlit door where children sleep afraid a little 
of the dark. 



68 



VII 

TAKING ONESELF TOO SERIOUSLY 

Among the microbes, which are very dangerous 
and to be guarded against with all diligence, is the 
taking oneself too seriously. To be a fool may not 
be set down as a sin and yet it leads to chief sins. 
**Thou shalt not be a fool,'* would be a good com- 
mandment and one for which there is real need 
and one which would be kept right busy all days 
of the year. Such a commandment never would 
have a day off, but would display all hours of 
busy day and busy night the placard "This is my 
busy day." It may not be wicked to be a fool, 
but it is irreligious, inasmuch as the gospel is 
against waste. The gathering of the fragments 
of sense would prove a taxing profession howbeit 
(so far as regards society) one of splendid service 
and extraordinary remuneration. The fragmen- 
tarily-wise and the pretty-generally-foolish are 
not simply fantastical like Launce and his fellow 
canine, but are wickedly ruinous. The cap and 
bells are worn by the king's fool and donned as 
legitimately by the king and the courtiers. King 
Lear's fool was so profoundly unfoolish, so widely 
wise, as that he breaks our hearts while he tries 
vainly to endow the foolish king with brains. He 
has a task too taxing even for his powers. The 

cap and bells adorn King Lear, only he refuses to 

69 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

wear them. Possessing the thing, he refuses the 
sign of the thing. King Arthur's fool sobbing in 
the darkness and the gathering rain, "I am thy 
fool, and I shall never make thee smile again," is 
as profound pathos as ever sobs in Alfred Tenny- 
son, poet laureate. How could jest drip from the 
lips of such a fool as sobs so as to break the hearts 
of all of us.f^ And yet here is the point of pith and 
meaning and so easy to be missed. Just because 
he was a wit and has humor could he lurch to 
such sea-sorrow. The perpetually lachrymose are 
not the souls most ladened with sorrow nor 
freighted most with tears. They weep so co- 
piously as to be out of the real substance of sor- 
row. The spirits which smile and sing like birds 
swaying on swaying reeds in Summer are those 
whose wells of sorrow are at the brim. A bird 
could lean its yellow bill and drink their tears, so 
full the well is — but only God knows it. The 
facetious are likely to be habited in inward sor- 
row. The laughter of them is close kinsman of 
sorrow and of pain. By no mischance is such a 
fun-poet as Hood author of "Bridge of Sighs" 
and that eternally-young sob of ill-requited labor 
"The Song of the Shirt." Nor is there anything 
outre in that, that man of tireless and versatile 
mirth. Jack Falstaff and the Connecticut Yankee 
in King Arthur's court, should at their dying set 
the whole world sobbing until it was as if all their 
scattered laughters which had been flung about 
into the sky with wild luxuriance like a summer 

70 



TAKING ONESELF TOO SERIOUSLY 

growth of fern and vine, by the chill of death on a 
sudden had been thickened into cloud, widespread, 
to obscure the sky and then the cloud had fairly 
drenched the world with rain. These deathbeds 
have all the world sobbing by them. This neigh- 
borliness of tears and laughter may well compel a 
steadfast look. 

Laughter is redemptive, sanitary. There is an 
intellectual sanitization we should give heed to. 
To keep the personality open to the facts of things 
is a study which calls for teachers apt to teach. 

Taking oneself too seriously precludes the get- 
ting exact images of things and conduces to 
getting a certain cartoon effect, whereas life is 
not a cartoon but a character. Things are sanely 
set on a sane landscape under a sane sky. Life is 
not lugubrious though fraught with sadness; life 
is not a joke though filled with jokes. Also a 
clown is more likely to get at the secret of the 
world than the perpetually morose. "The mourner 
goeth about the streets" though we are not given 
to understand that he reports the facts of the 
street accurately. The body who takes himself 
too seriously will write no tragedy though he may 
supply a character in comedy. 

The taker of himself too seriously has no weigh- 
ing apparatus with which, from time to time, to 
get at the avoirdupois of things. His specific 
gravity seems phenomenal and totally out of all 
proportion to the estimate of the community. In- 
deed, the community (which in the eyes of the 

71 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

taker of himself too seriously) is a frivolous per- 
son given over to gayety and little conceits, and is 
ruinously remiss in activity and progress. He se- 
verely eyes the frivolous many, being himself 
neither frivolous nor given to laughter, but so 
sternly sedate that he could edit a Book of Lam- 
entations over the unseemly laughter of the whole 
world, aside from himself. He feels the weight of 
society upon him alone. It weighs much and 
lacerates the shoulders of that servant who must 
wear the world's work which the many shoulders 
should bear and will not. He often wears glasses, 
the two eye-pieces being serious symbols of his 
serious intent. He cannot leave himself at home 
and go out and frisk. He never goes out, and he 
will not frisk. He stays and tends the stuff. He 
is always dubious and sees signs in the heavens 
and the earth, but never the signs of spring or 
promise. Late autumn and congealing winter are 
his season. I did not say "seasons" — I said sea- 
son. The fall and winter are mingled with this 
deeper (that is, denser) soul. He feels he may 
never lie down to sleep lest the sky should sink 
and the milky way should wander crazily along 
the heavens and go to smithereens. The heavens 
cannot be trusted. They must be run; and this 
serious brother must run them. No alternative is 
possible. He scrutinizes and would control all the 
world, both the doings of the cook and the doings 
of Providence. He sees graft and grafters and 

gambling and thuggery everywhere; and if him- 

72 



TAKING ONESELF TOO SERIOUSLY 

self should not look after things, they would go 
odds worse than they now do. He is credentialed 
to see what the many cannot see and to lift the 
cry, "The enemy is upon us." He is ubiquitous 
and does not sleep. "Vigilance is the price of 
liberty," that is, his vigilance. He knows not 
such a thing as a deputy, for to deputize an officer 
would be to trust the deputy and to trust the 
deputy would be to allow the ability of the 
deputy, whereas the very beams on which the 
floor of this seriosity is laid are that there is but 
one who is trustworthy, it being superfluous to 
name who that one is. He considers that a repre- 
sentative democracy is no democracy, a direct pri- 
mary being the sole organon of a precise democracy 
and himself must be the primary. "Trust no one 
save thyself" is the fundamental proposition of this 
astute citizen, who is the one licensed inspector of 
public weal and manners and procedure in gen- 
eral. Really, he feels he must have written the 
Doom's-Day Book, and if he were to go away 
for a few minutes he would chain the book, yet 
the chain might have an imperfect link so the 
book might be abstracted; hence he will not leave 
the book. As certain bank functionaries have 
their meals served in the cages, thus obviating 
the going out for dining, so this serious taker of 
himself has his meals served where he holds and 
retains the Doom's-Day Book. Nothing must go 
at loose ends, hence he will hold the ends. The 

wear and tear on the soul is terrific when one is so 

73 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

situated. The universe is rather large and taking 
entire charge of it requires strict attention, vigi- 
lant nerves, and muscles of steel. 

He sometimes considers that the universe should 
be contracted so as to give himself a little needed 
leisure. He feels and says sometimes, even oft 
times, in a weary voice, that for one man this 
burden is unbearable though he feels it must be 
borne for humanity's sake. One must not shirk 
one's responsibilities. That would be cowardice. 
However weighty the load, the fit man must bear 
it, complainingly of course, yet bear it, com- 
plainingly, would there were more who could! 
But it falls on the fit few, and though they break 
under the load, like an overloaded wagon, their 
wheels must revolve, so that though there be little 
locomotion there may be due commotion. 

This serious taker of himself takes deep breaths, 
groans much when he has no stomach ache and 
dispenses fog and climatic inclemency. When he 
has made inclemency he considers that, metereo- 
logically, he is a success. His favorite wind is the 
east wind. Not the wind of the Israelites, for it 
brought quails and an epicurean dinner to those 
manna-satiated diners. No, his east wind is that 
which blows on the Maine coast and visits the 
marrow of the bones and gives the shivers, or it 
is the English east wind which blows in winter 
and fairly shivers the roots off the trees. He has 
a complacent theory that when the world is un- 
comfortable it is to be congratulated, 

74 



TAKING ONESELF TOO SERIOUSLY 

If you dine at a table next him, he looks at his 
victuals with a sad and rheumatic look as bidding 
them farewell. He is conspicuously absent- 
minded. What is good fellowship to him.'^ Eat- 
ing is putting edibles to good use when himself is 
being fed; for clearly no man can bear burdens 
systematically as he does unless he eats. There 
is no pleasure to him in eating. Far and away 
from that. Petrify the thought. Nay! More 
nays! He eats so as to bear the accumulated 
burdens of the world. Therefore eating is serious. 
It is a doleful duty. He is stocking up the com- 
missary so that the campaign may proceed. 

His eyes peer like those of a hotel inspector 

looking for a hole in the bed sheet. The frivolous 

laughter and badinage of the other guests do not 

reach his quagmire of seriosity. He delves apart. 

He may get a worm and will therefore be kinsman 

of the early bird; there will then be two birds. 

That thought should cheer him but does not, for 

he feels that the other bird would not be much of 

a fowl. Though there seem to be two there is in 

reality but one. He is the bird. Every road leads 

to himself. Rome was a temporary capital for the 

earth; himself is the settled, deliberate, capital; 

and rightly, yea, and necessarily all roads to him. 

If the Wise Men from the East should report at 

his abode, he would not be surprised. It would 

simply be another natural event which certified 

that these Orientals, whose names he would not 

ask, were wise men. 

75 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

This taker of himself too seriously breaks his 
teeth on the gravels (to speak in the dental phrase 
of Jeremiah when he was busy lamenting "Lam- 
entations"). This exercise would not be a hilarity 
to the many, but to him is better than taking a 
holiday. When he hears a tooth crack or break 
he groans, "Some one who wears the world's 
interest in his every thought must break his 
teeth on the gravels." It never occurs to him 
to spit the gravels out and not chew them and 
so save his teeth. To chew gum is more com- 
mendable than chewing gravels, and, besides, it 
enriches a certain well-known gum manufacturer. 

This too-serious taker of himself never rests, 
nor, be it said in strict parenthesis, will he let 
anybody else rest. He tires everybody. People 
in his house cannot retire, they must go to bed, 
and by stealth. In the morning he gives a melan- 
choly wheeze to his word ^'you rested well?" not 
at all as being interested in your welfare, but as 
at once resenting it, and suggesting that for him- 
self there was no rest. While you slept careless 
of the universe he was waking, drying its axles so 
they would creak more. An uncreaking universe 
is obnoxious to him. If it creaks he feels it is 
going. He loves the danger signal and puts one 
up on good roads as a sign that this highway is 
dangerously safe. A short hundred years ago a 
murder was committed here before there was a 
street, even before there was a village. Danger! 

He warns the children that a banana peeling is 

76 



TAKING ONESELF TOO SERIOUSLY 

sometimes dropped on the sidewalk, therefore let 
them not walk on the sidewalk, but walk in the 
middle of the street, for in that safety and privacy, 
nothing worse will befall them than being struck 
by a street car or run over by an automobile. 

He frequents the almanacs and patent medicine 
literature, for in their extemporized weather and 
chronic ailments he feels at home. The world is a 
hospital, anyway. The presence of the de-legged 
and diseased he considers a benefit. He foretold it. 

So he creaks on and they employ a creaky 
undertaker to bury him. Then, the world makes 
merry. It has holiday. 



77 



VIII 
NEC TIMEO 

The death-fear of great-heart Sam Johnson 
plows a deep furrow in his burly history. How 
that fear cut at his face like a sword which never 
sought sheath! Nor need we wonder. Death is 
a sinister figure ever in sight and ever in every- 
body's sight along all roads of life. Death will 
not hide himself from view. He swaggers: mod- 
esty is not in his mien. He has an exaggerated 
opinion of himself. Just because no one may 
elude him he thinks greatly of himself. He is 
only a barnacle attaching himself to everybody's 
ship though anybody knows the barnacle is no 
advantage to the ship. Quite otherwise. 

In the pages of the gruff old literary dictator, 
the haunting fear of death constantly intrudes in 
the deeper moments and movements of his soul 
Death peers grimly down, and the great brain 
and the great heart are beaten down by it. Beasts 
have no fear of death. They solely strive for life. 
A wounded animal or bird is a pathetic fearless- 
ness. Death-fear comes from thought. The pass- 
ing out into the insufferable space where all is 
sightless as a mist slanted through by a cold and 
drizzling rain! It is amazing to be alive: it is 

amazing not to be alive. To look at any one's 

78 



NEC TIMEO 

corpse lying cold, pulseless, white, majestically wept 
over but not wakened by the weeping — who of us 
but is hit hard by that scene? To have been here in 
the house of life so long and then to vacate and 
leave the key in the lock but never to turn it 
again in all, all the years which smoke along the 
narrow pathway of the centuries, that chills the 
blood of most of us. We have contracted a taste 
for life; we have fallen into its homely ways; we 
have camped by its fires lit by our own hands and 
cut the wood with which we have fed the homely 
kitchen fire where our daily meal was prepared; 
we have forded the stream wimpling along the 
shallows or have waded hip deep ("Wakarusa," 
said the Indian wader), and have followed the 
gentle cattle home and have regaled the chickens 
with a meal till they looked on us wholesomely 
as their givers of bread, when they were in reality 
our givers of meat; we have worked the day 
through till the dark, and have sat down in the 
gloaming with a quiet voice to listen to the whip- 
poorwills; we have gone to sleep, and at the end 
of the night have risen with the dawn to take up 
life's same simple tasks anew with gladness and 
singing; we have gone to church and have prayed 
and hoped and sung and repented, have caught 
the world's joy to our heart, have listened to the 
world's quips and joined in the world's laughter, 
till nothing of all the doings of this big, strong 
world seemed incongruous, we of it, and it of us; 
and then some time near by it will all stop like an 

79 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

outworn watch and others shall light the fire and 
fare forth to the field and carol with the dewy 
dawn; and the flowers and winds and woodsides 
and prairies will not even know we have departed ! 
Such thoughts dig cruel rowels in our sides till 
they bleed like a soldier to his death. Blessed for 
most of us that we are so crowded and happy and 
tired as not to have time to think of these things 
often, scarcely at all; but it rushes to be gone, to 
vanish like a swift flying dove vanishes in the 
darkening heavens. Death is not neighborly al- 
though ever near. I blame not beloved, whole- 
some, great Johnson, that death smote him in the 
face like a plowman's hand, so that he winced. 
It was natural. 

• His grasp of elemental humanness and morali- 
ties did not let him look sidewise at Death. It 
was ever his bluff way to look things and men full 
in the face; but to look at Death, he was afraid. 
It was pitiful to hear his voice tremble and to see 
his color vanish at the voice of Death. Pitiful 
but not strange; no, never strange. Death is ever 
at the advantage: we never at the advantage. 
Death is as a robber in the dark — you cannot see 
him, but he can see you, and can stab and slash. 
You fight at random, he with virulent sagacity. 
His pugnacity is bloody and mortal in intent; 
hazardless to him, hazardful to you. He never 
will fight in the open; for ought we know, Death 
is a slinking coward. 

To flout brave, blunt, boisterous Johnson is 

80 



NEC TIMEO 

singularly easy but not equally witful. Johnson 
is as natural as swaying shadows and the falling 
rain and as transparent as hill air. The, adventure 
into the desert where there is no way, is fraught 
with nescience. We must grow resolute to face 
it. Death comes hard to the resolute hand and 
skilled brain and restless and resistless human 
energy. It seems so like spilling peculiarly precious 
jewels into the deep parts of the sea, this adven- 
turing of the Death. What advantages it that we 
die? Might we not as well stay.f^ Would it crowd 
the tavern if we stayed .^^ 

Now, that is the sobriety of the doctrine of 
death. But for him we should crowd the tavern 
of life. If the Platos and Pauls and Dantes and 
Shakespeares and Miltons always stayed, there 
would be no room for all the rest of us. The 
tavern-keeper would say carelessly to adventurers 
come to his hostel, "All the rooms are full; no 
room for you in the inn," as was once the pitiful 
case when the Lord of all the worlds there are 
came and asked a night's lodging and then slept 
amongst the cattle! No, death serves a great 
world purpose. He empties the rooms so that 
newcomers may be lodged. Yet not the less, it is 
hard on the old lodger who took his "ease at his 
inn" to be thus ordered out and to be turned out 
in the dark and the hearth fire and lamp ex- 
tinguished in his room. Why should we not be 
afraid? The method of death is ruthless and we 

cannot get used to it. I have seen it so often, have 

81 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

heard the tear-plash and have seen the tearful 
hand leap to the heart that was in pain like a 
sword thrust because the beloved should open the 
door no more. No morel 

Dying seems so like stepping into a void, like 
walking off a sea cliff to whirl into a shrieking, 
shambling sea, and the place that knows us, knows 
us no more: but there shall we struggle in the 
regurgitant waves that tiger about us in the 
stifling void. In the Titanic there was something 
frankly horrible when the cold Labrador sea with- 
out anger and in placid peace sucked the floating 
humans down nor paused to listen to their cry. I 
saw them; I see them now, bubbles that floated a 
moment and broke and left but a drop of wet 
breath on the ocean's face. And that was how 
Death looked as old Johnson peered into his face. 
I do not wonder that he shivered and drew the 
kindly coverlet of loving companions over his 
head to shut out the fearsome look. 

And yet is not this essay entitled "Nee Timeo".'^ 
Has the author forgotten his theme? He has, in 
his lifetime, forgotten much, and we shall not be 
surprised if his theme has been forgotten. Though 
in good sooth, it has not. He has been writing on 
the horror of darkness, the bleak moor where, 
wading in the sullen dark, the morass catches the 
traveler's feet and sucks them slowly and then 
swiftly down, but sucks down while the road winds 
on and the stars go out and all sobbing is silent 

as the dead. Brains cannot ignore Death nor his 

82 



NEC TIMED 

crude laceration and we all so helpless and for- 
lorn! This is not a chapter, rather a half -chapter 
in the serious drama which could readily even- 
tuate in a tragedy with blood and swords and 
sobs and calls of force and fear and great dying, 
the slaughter of the mightiest battle man ever 
knew. We need not try to pull ourselves into 
saying Death is not grim and horrible. He is 
both; and more. This writer recalls having spent 
nearly a week with Daniel A. Goodsell a scant 
fortnight before he died. That it was a golden 
week goes without the saying. That quick men- 
tality was at ease and in poise and his foil was 
never sheathed. His conversation was scintillant. 
He spoke out of his heart. "I never felt better 
nor so well in years," said the deep voice; and in a 
fortnight he was as dead as earth, though his 
memory is like the fragrance of growing things at 
every blossoming spring. 

Dr. Johnson was as robust a moral intelligence 
as our race has ever known and has spoken as 
witful words concerning eternal righteousness as 
any man since the apostolic days. He believed in 
God; he believed also in Christ but had not caught 
the Sun full on his face, the Sun called Christ. 
He was not quite master of the daylight. The 
valley of the shadow of death darkened his noon. 
He was an earthly normal. He was of the earth 
earthy, but not regally could he see the Lord from 
heaven. When we watch Johnson we can never 

do so with a sense of rancor nor with gelid soul. 

83 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

He was so human, so humorous, so child of the 
clod, so winged and so broken-winged, one of the 
most human humannesses ever begotten on 
the ground. 

He smelled the grave breath, but not the lily 
breath. He felt the winter of Death, but not 
the spring with bird call, with flower call, with 
Christ call. The voice of Jesus on a tossing wave 
of the sea in the night calling cheerily above the 
toil of rowers and the crush of waves and the 
creak of oar-locks where hid sailors leaned at the 
oars, the call "Be of good cheer. It is I; be not 
afraid," that voice Johnson did not quite hear, 
though he needed to hear it as we all need to hear 
it. What a brave light in the darkness and how 
quenchless! "Be not afraid." That is our lumi- 
nous word, and needed. Without it life is bound 
to become hysterical at sight of Death and the 
grave. 

"Nee timeo" — neither fear I — grows out of 
Christ's "Be not afraid," as a tulip grows out of 
its bulb. It is not that the grave has been de- 
naturized, but that Christ has shown a way out 
of the grave. We are on a road and we cannot be 
stopped. "The grave is an inn of a pilgrim on 
the way to Jerusalem" are sweet words which 
mark an Apocalypse. To meet Death, then, with 
a habitual smile is a great deliverance; and no 
sane man can deny it. Brave people have ever 
died bravely. But there has been much dying 

which has been as the dying of a criminal at the 

84 



NEC TIMEO 

scaffold, more than a little spectacular. Christian 
dying has been putting on the wedding garment 
and going in to the marriage. Said an aged and 
beautiful minister of God as he lay dying and 
thanking a preacher friend for having come to 
see him one other time, "I shall soon see God." 
Frankly, talk like that is too' deep for tears and 
too high for stars. It springs above the head a sky 
quite out of all human devising or human revising. 
A faltering breath, a broken speech, a failing 
sight so that with a sob of Tennyson, "The case- 
ment slowly grows a glimmering square," and at 
that moment of dusky vision, upon the man rushes 
an Apocalypse of the very far off to which one 
flash of wings will bear the soul ! That is glorious, 
glorious! "There is a way out," is what the 
Christ- version of death has to say. No trepida- 
tion, only a waiting until God shall give us a 
good-night kiss. 

In Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar" is seen a 
hesitancy like that of Johnson, but a looking a 
little deeper into the breaking day. That poem 
has the light turned low and then a sigh at the 
dark, a half sobbing and hesitant setting forth 
into the boat called Death. And here is a normal 
expression of our earthly life touched gravely by 
the Christ, but not washed with the sunlight of 
the Christ. It is an accurate rendering into speech 
of the twilight of faith, which would yet advance 
and not retrace its dull steps on the wave-washed 

sands. It is Tennyson all through and through, 

85 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

half hesitant, half unhesitant, lit with the gloam- 
ing — but still, out toward Christ. Brave and 
strong and hushed his poem is, and lonely. In 
it is no triumphant rush of voice, no angel's song, 
no abundant morning where "bloom the lilies of 
eternal peace." 

"Sunset and evening star, 
And one clear call for me! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar. 
When I put out to sea, 

"But such a tide as moving seems asleep. 
Too full for sound and foam, 
When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
Turns again home. 

"Twilight and evening bell. 
And after that the dark! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell. 
When I embark; 

"For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 
The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
When I have crossed the bar." 

So Tennyson's twilight just passed a little be- 
yond Dr. Johnson's fear and frankly expressed 
horror of the grave, yet with a wild clutch at the 
pierced hand of Christ. And the relationship be- 
tween tavern-haunting old Sam Johnson and the 
lonely, solitary Tennyson is alluring and very 
heartening to thought and faith. Two manly 
souls, both looking in the same direction, both 

knowing they could not stay for always here, 

86 



NEC TIMEO 

both knowing they could not Hve alone and that 
they dare not die alone, both broken into in their 
mental and spiritual fervors by the voice of God, 
both looking askance at Death; and the face of 
Johnson is pale and the face of Tennyson is quiet: 
and yet I will profess that old Johnson minds me 
of brave Peter, feet sinking in the weltering wave, 
and who cannot disengage himself from the cum- 
bering death, but with a wild cry brings himself 
help, "Lord, save, or I perish." The collocation 
of the death-mood of Johnson and the death- 
mood of Tennyson greatly moves my soul. 

Howbeit, the unnamed preacher's 'T shall soon 
see God," has a spaciousness which neither lexi- 
cographer nor poet knew\ His words had wings 
for flight and sky which theirs have not. 

Paul's death-mood is like trumpet's blowing — 
is like Enoch Arden when his voice lifted and 
sang, "A sail, a sail!" Paul had learned what he 
knew from Christ. He said so; and we know so. 
And an aside of John touching Jesus is like a 
sunup; that aside is where it is remarked that 
Jesus "knowing that he had come forth from the 
Father and must return to the Father." What a 
transcendent view of death that is! How shall 
we grovel, after hearing talk like that or know 
darkness after having had sunup like that.^ In a 
word, Jesus's view of death was he was going 
home. And people are not afraid of going home, 
only homesick for it. 

And Paul, whose schoolmaster was Christ, sings 

87 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

but does not sob, "The time of my departure is 
at hand." The boat is ready and the sea is here; 
and as regards death, it is to him only "to depart 
and be with Christ, which is far better." Paul is 
not acquiescent but triumphant. He wants to 
try the sea. "Now we know in part, but then! 
but then!" 

And into this version of Nee timeo, the "Yea, 
though I walk through the valley of the shadow 
of death, I will fear no evil," strides great Brown- 
ing's very great "Prospice," quite the most tri- 
umphant march tune to which death has ever 
been set, since the sayings of Jesus and Paul. 
The poem requires silence as a comment. It is 
too triumphant for commentary. The rush, the 
shout, the absence of fear, the fight, seem to say 
there is fun in death. This poem has no kinsman. 
One poem like "Prospice" suffices while the earth 
grows hoary. We shall be singing that tune when 
time makes voyage to eternity. 

"Fear death? — to feel the fog in my throat. 

The mist in my face, 
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 

I am nearing the place, 
The power of the night, the press of the storm. 

The post of the foe; 
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form. 

Yet the strong man must go: 
For the journey is done and the summit attained. 

And the barriers fall. 
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained, 

The reward of it all. 

88 



NEC TIMEO 

I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 

The best and the last! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore, 

And bade me creep past. 
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers 

The heroes of old. 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 

Of pain, darkness and cold. 
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave. 

The black minute's at end. 
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, 

Shall dwindle, shall blend. 
Shall change, shall come first a peace out of pain. 

Then a light, then thy breast, 
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, 

And with God be the rest!" 

Nec timeo! 



S9 



IX 

THE REVELATION OF SAINT JOHN THE 

DIVINE 

Adam Clarke, that erudite Methodist com- 
mentator, refused to write a commentary on the 
book of Revelation, whereupon some humorless 
brain proceeded to do what the Irish keen-wit had 
refrained from doing, and the result is printed in 
Clarke's Commentaries. A commentary is an at- 
tempted explanation, wherefore the Revelation, 
which is a conflagration, does not yield to the 
commentator's pen. 

This present writer, therefore, is in haste to 
remark that he attempts no comment on this 
wonderful book. He is ill in arithmetic and so 
will not cipher on the number of the beast, 666. 
Were he an arithmetician, he would be dissuaded 
from the sum aforesaid in view of the sorry array 
of figures which those wise in numbers have in- 
flicted upon us, though not to the getting a cor- 
rect answer. Possibly it were better to let God 
do his own figuring. God can cipher. 

The solitary purpose of this writer is to stand 
or kneel and wonder and rejoice and worship. 
That is not methematical : that is human and dis- 
creet. This is how The Revelation appeals to one 

body — If left in the hands of an untutored mind 

90 



REVELATION OF SAINT JOHN THE DIVINE 

who dwelt on the edges or in the heart of the 
desert, or dwelt rimmed round by the unshored 
ocean, by perusal of this book of rapture he would 
become a poet laureate. I should hesitate to put 
this book of fire in my pocket lest it should com- 
pel immediate conflagration. The Par sees should 
love this book, and would, should they read it. 
It is the volume of the multi-suns. Fire burns 
on every promontory and blazes in every low- 
sagging valley. Sometimes a volcano is in erup- 
tion giving out a wild flaunting banner of sullen 
flame, sometimes it is moonrise and the sky is 
grown silvern with that shadow light which God 
endowed when he thought out the moon, some- 
times a starry radiancy of evening skies, some- 
times a sun or a galaxy of them — but light all- 
wheres, so that in this book there is no unlit room. 
Radiancy appears ubiquitous and promissory of 
being eternal. All dark spots shall in due time 
leap out into authortative glory. 

This is the Glory-book. Shadows and darkness 
are to be burned up. "Let there be light," it 
would seem, is the motto of this last book God 
took in hand to write. He is banishing the dark; 
he is ensphering the dawn so that it may make 
an eternal sunrise for the soul. 

"The Revelation" is a book of souls. Souls 

only count. The world whereby the race has set 

such uncommon store is, in this book, on the way 

to extinction like a too-old volcano crater. Like 

the leaves on a green tree when the fire burns too 

91 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

near, the world's substance withers, shrinks, falls. 
All solid things, as man had reckoned, proved 
volatile; the spirit things bound out into the 
landscape of eternity as the real substantialities. 
In this book is the certain authoritative change 
of the center of gravity. Cities, mountains, king- 
doms, governments made exodus, while the im- 
palpable human soul, sainthood, the church, the 
Lamb of God, the Resurrection and the Life, the 
Beginning and the End, the Almighty God eternal 
conscience, the authority of the soul, the fruits of 
patience, the glory of goodness, the perpetuity of 
holy influence, the inevanescence of love, the calm, 
eternal preeminence of God, the subsiding as in a 
bitter sea of all earthly kingdoms and dominions 
and from the dim swirl and wrath- of that wide, 
wild water, the emergence of the Kingdom, 
when "the kingdoms of this world shall become a 
kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ" — these 
are some of the things which no diminution can 
overtake and no mutilation can maim. The 
things we, in history, had supposed were perish- 
able and which we feared for and trembled over 
with brooding heart, are shown to be the eternal, 
the eventual immortalities. The universe has 
swapped centers. Matter must make way for 
spirit. Not that matter is a myth, but that it is 
diseased and is perishable and that it makes its 
blinded way toward sepulture while spirit, open- 
eyed and mighty-strengthened, makes way into 
everlastingness where tears dim eyes no more nor 

92 



REVELATION OF SAINT JOHN THE DIVINE 

sorrow waits to deck the brow with withered 
leaves. 

The Revelation is eternity on fire. God has 
seen fit to put eternity in a bonfire to the end that 
man might see what could not be burned up in 
any fire. We need such illumination. We had 
long enough had our torch of rushlight blowing in 
the wind to see by. Behind us was lit in a poor 
fashion, but before us was a valley of the shadow 
of death, and this side of that stood the mountain 
of the shadow of life. We were heading into 
shadow. The tender saying of an old-time singer 
was, tenderly "He lighteth my candle." And our 
need is for a lamp for our feet and a light to the 
path. When the stars are invisible or their trem- 
ulous light not enough to walk by, what shall 
lamp that night .^^ Then cometh Christ with that 
song of daylight, *T am the light of the world," 
howbeit, himseK passed on a sunny day through 
sunny skies into a sunlight behind the sunlight 
and our graves are with us yet — ^Ah yet! And 
evil was raucous- voiced and wickedness wore its 
bloody sword in its right hand and smote night 
and day, day and night, and history was like a 
beggar in the sun who loitered rather than jour- 
neyed and limped as always lame and begged 
with beggar's lips in beggar's humdrum utterance; 
and we plodded into a shadow afoot; and then 
God set eternity on fire that we might have the 
nighttime of our darkness lit, and flung into the 

bold flaming outline of the serried mountain ranges 

93 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

of eternity the deathlessness of righteousness to 
make neighbors of heartsease rather than hearts- 
hurt because we saw that "the things which are 
seen are temporal, but the things which are not 
seen are eternal." So when God has lit his light 
we do well to watch the conflagration on the 
landscape. 

"The Book -of -Vision -of -the -Landscape -of -the - 
Long-Run," that is "The Revelation of Saint 
John the Divine." The Short-Run, we know that 
landscape. There have we dwelt. It is an un- 
certain land. There tears mix with the sunlight 
and we can scarcely focus our sight on a scene 
ere it is drenched with a storm or lost in some 
sudden midnight. The peevish landscape of the 
Now and Near is ever near us and ministers to 
constant perturbation. It unmans our spirit. We 
grow neurotic with its sudden and peevish changes. 
We cannot keep our heads nor are we quite 
schooled to keep our hearts. We have inward 
fever. Our lips parch sometimes even when we 
come to pray. Sleet stings in the face and eyes so 
that we cannot see even when we look. Who 
knows how things are going to come out.f^ We 
walk by Faith. God says things will come out 
well and bids us bide in peace. So we try to do 
and so we do after our hectic fashion; but the 
way is long and we are only tarrying a brief space 
of a day or less, and we cannot command the 
landscape. While we look it shifts or vanishes. 

"How will things come out.f^" we weep or pray 

94 



REVELATION OF SAINT JOHN THE DIVINE 

sobbingly. Death stings us in the face, and by 
our tears our sight is bHnded. "We touch God's 
right hand in the darkness and are lifted up and 
strengthened," howbeit we did not see, we could 
not see. The faces of our vanished beloved — we 
cannot quite set our eyes upon them. Where are 
our dead saints hid.^ Where do they stay while 
we are coming .f^ Are they "kept by the power of 
God" for us near him.^^ Soul, thou sobbest so in 
thy praying, and thine eyes are too full of tears 
to see when the clouds rush apart for a moment, 
so that ere thou canst brush the tears away to 
look, the vision is spent! 

Then God sets eternity on fire for us to see by; 
and things invisible become apparent. Philosophy 
of History is a book we have read with less or 
more of information, yet here in The Revelation is 
that philosophy of history set on fire, and we see 
it not as on a page printed in black but on a land- 
scape of eternity written in fire. "Earth's Holo- 
caust" was what weird Nathaniel Hawthorne 
wrote of. "Eternal Holocausts" is what the 
patient God wrote of in the book of Revelation. 

"We who are about to die salute you" {moraturi 
salutamus) was what the broken blades, called 
gladiators, sang in last refrain; and in The Reve- 
lation, the things that are not about to die {non- 
moraturi salutamus) salute you. The deathless 
things spring into the daylight and lift up their 
carol. The deathlessnesses are singing in the 

heavenly choir. This is the learning of the angels, 

95 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

the anthem of the immortals, the paean of the 
blood-washed who constitute the unfettered com- 
pany of the redeemed — the hymnody of those 
who dwell near God about the throne. 

The sublimity of The Revelation of Saint John 
the Divine is to be set against all literature. Only 
the book of Job and the Gospels, memorabilia of 
the Son of God, can be mentioned here without 
a lurch in the voice. Of earth's monographs, 
Milton's Paradise Lost, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress, and Dante's Trilogy only can be spoken 
of. The Gospels give the days of His flesh; 
The Revelation gives the day of His spirit. The 
Gospels watch God at the cradle, at the well, 
on the dusty way, in the anguish, in the grave, at 
the resurrection. And we watch while we kneel. 
His glory! "We beheld his glory, the glory as of 
the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and 
truth," was what one disciple long after said. In 
The Revelation his glory is his everyday apparel. 

"And I turned to see the voice that spake with 
me. And being turned, I saw seven golden can- 
dlesticks; and in the midst of the seven candle- 
sticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a 
garment down to the foot, and girt about the 
paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs 
were white like wool, as white as snow; and his 
eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto 
fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his 
voice as the sound of many waters." 

This is the first picture painted of the Son of 

96 



REVELATION OF SAINT JOHN THE DIVINE 

God. John wrote a biography of Christ, our 
Lord, but not in all did he attempt a portrait. 
The family picture of the Saviour might well be 
omitted. The eternal picture of the Lord of Life 
and Glory we must possess. John the Beloved 
becomes the first painter of his Master. His 
portrait is a blaze of pure splendor, light — all 
light. I can scarcely watch, the glory blinds me so. 

"Jove frowned and darkened half the sky," pre- 
sumably is the sublimest conception Homer has 
of his god. Though when we set alongside of 
this that pure rush of light, the purple splendor 
and the sun-white splendor of the Revelation, we 
cannot see Olympic Jove. The light of The Reve- 
lation's splendor changes Homeric splendor to dim 
twilight. 

Watch and see: "And I saw heaven opened, 
and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon 
him was called Faithful and True, and in right- 
eousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes 
were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many 
crowns; and he had a name written, that no man 
knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a 
vesture dipped in blood; and his name is called 
The Word of God. And the armies which were in 
heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed 
in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his 
mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should 
smite the nations: and he shall rule them with 
a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of 

the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And 

97 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name 
written, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords." 

Here is seen "A woman clothed with the sun" 
(what raiment!), and "the moon under her feet," 
and the revelator saw an angel standing in the 
sun (not touched with flame or fearful of it). 

Poet, John Zebedee; preacher, John Zebedee; 
Beloved John Zebedee, further saw an angel 
"with one foot on the land and one foot on the 
sea" (and the angel stood as if his feet pressed on 
a granite floor). 

He saw: "And I looked, and behold a white 
cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the 
Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, 
and in his hand a sharp sickle. . . . And he that 
sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth; 
and the earth was reaped." 

He sat and yet did the world's work. He sat on 
a cloud and harvested the ground. 

Here is the patience of the saints: "where are 
they that keep the commandments of God, and 
the faith of Jesus." 

"And I saw another mighty angel come down 

from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow 

was upon his head, and his face was as it were 

the sun, and his feet as pillars of flre: and he had 

in his hand a little book open : and he set his right 

foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth, 

and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth : 

and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered 

their voices." 

98 



REVELATION OF SAINT JOHN THE DIVINE 

Ah me! this is glorious! The garments of 
eternity are very bright. No mourning gowns 
are worn in heaven! 

"Clothed with a cloud" — we read of that; and 
"a rainbow was upon his head," and "his face 
was as it were the sun." Earth's imagery van- 
ishes like a wasted dewdrop before sublimities 
like these. To be flatly accurate, there is no other 
sublimity when the revelator opens his lips. 

He saw: "And the stars of heaven fell unto the 
earth, even as a &g tree casteth her untimely figs, 
when he is shaken of a mighty wind. And the 
heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled 
together; and every mountain and island were 
moved out of their places. And the kings of the 
earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and 
the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every 
bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in 
the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and 
said to the mountains and rocks. Fall on us, and 
hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the 
throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the 
great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be 
able to stand .f^" 

He saw: "And after these things I saw four 
angels standing on the four corners of the earth, 
holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind 
should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor 
on any tree." 

He saw how "Every island fled away, and the 

mountains were not found." And he saw 

99 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

"Thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment 
was given unto them: and I saw the souls of 
them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, 
and for the word of God, and which had not wor- 
shiped the beast, neither his image, neither had 
received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their 
hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a 
thousand years." 

He saw souls. That is the Revelation in eter- 
nity. Souls we have not seen as yet. Men argue 
about them as if they were not. In eternity souls 
shall stand out apparent as the throne of God. 

He saw: "And I saw a great white throne, and 
him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and 
the heaven fled away; and there was found no 
place for them. And I saw the dead, small and 
great, stand before God; and the books were 
opened: and another book was opened, which is 
the book of life: and the dead were judged out of 
those things which were written in the books, 
according to their works. And the sea gave up 
the dead which were in it; and death and hell 
delivered up the dead which were in them: and 
they were judged every man according to their 
works." 

He saw man immortal. 

He saw: "And I saw a new heaven and a new 
earth: for the first heaven and first earth were 
passed away; and there was no more sea. And 
I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming 
down from God out of heaven, prepared as a 

100 



REVELATION OF SAINT JOHN THE DIVINE 

bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a 
great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the 
tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell 
with them, and they shall be his people, and God 
himself shall be with them, and be their God. 
And God shall wipe away all tears from their 
eyes; and there shall be no more death; neither 
sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any 
more pain: for the former things are passed away." 
He saw: "And he carried me away in the spirit 
to a great and high mountain, and showed me 
that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending 
out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: 
and her light was like unto a stone most precious, 
even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal; and had a 
wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at 
the gates twelve angels, and names written there- 
on, which are the names of the twelve tribes of 
the children of Israel: On the east three gates, on 
the north three gates; on the south three gates; 
and on the west three gates. And the wall of the 
city had twelve foundations, and in them the 
names of the .twelve apostles of the Lamb." "And 
the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the 
city was pure gold, like unto clear glass. And the 
foundations of the wall of the city were garnished 
with all manner of precious stones. The first 
foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the 
third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; the 
fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, 

chrysolyte; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; 

101 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

the tenth, a ehrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; 
the twelfth, an amethyst. And the twelve gates 
were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one 
pearl; and the street of the city was pure gold, as 
it were transparent glass. And I saw no temple 
therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the 
Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no 
need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in 
it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the 
Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of 
them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: 
and the kings of the earth do bring their glory 
and honor into it. And the gates of it shall not 
be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night 
there. And they shall bring the glory and honor 
of the nations into it. And there shall in no wise 
enter into it anything that defileth, neither what- 
soever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: 
but they which are written in the Lamb's book 
of life." 

He saw eternity at one with God. 

He saw: "And he showed me a pure river of 
water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of 
the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst 
of the street of it, and on either side of the river, 
was there the tree of life, which bare twelve man- 
ner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: 
and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of 
the nations. And there shall be no more curse: 
but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be 
in it; and his servants shall serve him: and they 

102 



REVELATION OF SAINT JOHN THE DIVINE 

shall see his face; and his name shall be in their 
foreheads. And there shall be no night there; 
and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; 
for the Lord God giveth them light: and they 
shall reign for ever and ever." "Hallelujah! for 
the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." The Lord 
even the Lamb shall overcome, for he is Lord of 
Lord and King of Kings. 

He saw and heard: "And I saw as it were a 
sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had 
gotten the victory over the beast, and over his 
image, and over his mark, and over the number 
of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the 
harps of God. And they sing the song of Moses 
the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, 
saying. Great and marvelous are thy works. Lord 
God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou 
King of saints." 

He saw: "And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood 
on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred 
forty and four thousand, having his Father's 
name written in their foreheads." 

And he heard: "And I heard a voice from 

heaven, as the voice -of many waters, . . . and I 

heard the voice of harpers harping with their 

harps: and they sung as it were a new song before 

the throne, and before the four beasts, and the 

elders: and no man could learn that song but 

the hundred and forty and four thousand, which 

were redeemed from the earth." 

And he saw: "And I saw another angel fly in 

103 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gos- 
pel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, 
and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, 
and people, saying with a loud voice. Fear God, 
and give glory to him; for the hour of his judg- 
ment is come: and worship him that made heaven, 
and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of 
waters." 

He saw and heard: "And the four and twenty 
elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell 
upon their faces and worshiped God, saying. We 
give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which 
art and wast, and art to come; because thou hast 
taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned." 

He saw and heard besides: "And the angel 
which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the 
earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware 
by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created 
heaven, and the things that therein are, and the 
earth, and the things that therein are, and the 
sea, and the things which are therein, that there 
should be time no longer." 

"I John saw these things and heard them." 

No such sight-seeing has been afforded before, 
nor shall be afforded again until we go sight- 
seeing in eternity. He saw and heard! Here, 
angels are unfamiliar folk. There, they crowd 
every street and smile across all morning meadows 
and fill all choirs. Angels, angels everywhere and 
the redeemed folks, those who have "come up 

through great tribulation, washed their garments 

104 



REVELATION OF SAINT JOHN THE DIVINE 

and made them white in the blood of the Lamb," 
those who have been scarred with fire and bitten 
by the Hon's teeth and have suffered innumerable 
calumnies from wicked lips, there they walk in 
everlasting morning free from care; and God 
seeth them and smiles what time he looks their 
way. 

The Book of Revelation of Saint John the 
Divine is the book of souls. 

He saw souls. That is the Revelation in eter- 
nity. Souls we have not seen as yet. Men argue 
about them as if they were not. In eternity souls 
shall stand out apparent as the throne of God. 
They do not argue souls there! they see them. 
This is the book of the immortals. No Socrates, 
or Plato, nor Paul argues the immortality of the 
soul in that immortal country. For the angels 
and the redeemed folks would laugh such argu- 
ments down. They would know such argumenta- 
tion pure childishness. There they possess a pure 
immortality. There the babies know themselves 
immortal, while here, their mothers wondered 
about it while their eyes were wet and their hearts 
were bleeding. Truly that is "The Better Land." 
It is the land of Christ the Lord. God there is 
visible and audible. God is everywhere and near, 
always near and they see his face! They walk 
with him. They live near him. They talk with 
him. Their east window opens on God's throne 
so that they possess eternal sunrise. 

Here, where shadows gather and the night 

105 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

comes on, where spring flowers wither and the 
grass grows sear, and the leaves at touch of the 
frost fall earthward wandering with the wind, 
here where partings bring frequent anguish to the 
heart and tears are customary things, here — but 
there — the sun up! There is where eternity puts 
faith into flower, and where faith is swallowed 
up in sight, and where the God of Love and Time 
and Eternity walks to and fro amongst his saints 
and makes them wonder that ever their hearts 
grew faint or that ever a sign was yearned for by 
their groping faith. 

Those years of weeping shall be forgot and only 
laughter and tumults of harps and voices and 
multitudinous glories set to music by the First 
Musician; and The Revelation shall be swallowed 
up in the life and glory that shall be the common 
destination of the soul. 



100 



"DID YOU GET ANYTHING?" 

On an early morning sown to gladness I was 
leisuring down a sunny river untouched by any 
wind, at peace with itself and all besides, and my 
boat making a narrow ripple, the perfection of 
artistry, my oars, dipping at their will and not at 
mine, which was seldom enough to suit a boat 
given to watching its own shadow in the stream, 
while from the tail end of the boat, a fish pole 
standing up vigilantly with much show of indus- 
try, though, so far as I observed, with little of the 
thing it had a show of, when a bright boy, intent 
on busy business and rowing right lustily and 
coming my way with all the perspiration of fishing 
in operation, sung out with a hullaballoo voice, 
"Did you get anything?" It was a cheery morn- 
ing voice of a lad duly freckled with swimming 
and fishing, a lad with a hundred promises of 
achievement as the years should loiter by, and I 
had not in my heart to dismiss the question with 
an answer other than the one he expected, so the 
reply was "Not yet," though all my machinery of 
body and soul resented the question as an in- 
trusion, a misnomer, and a heresy. 

Not, as the fond reader may naturally opine, 

that I resented the question, because accuracy of 

107 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

Speech and veracity of intent prompted a nega- 
tive rejoinder. No, fond friend, I am not enough 
of a fisherman to blush at piscatorial inability. I 
care less than nothing for the jeers of fishy folk 
who fish to catch. No shame is in me on the ex- 
hibit of an empty pole and line. The fewer fish 
caught the less weight to carry; and I was told 
by some perambulant know-everything that for a 
man in middle life to carry heavy burdens was 
unsanitary or undignified or unhealthy, I can't 
quite recall which, nor need I bend my memory 
to the tax of recalling. It does not matter; for 
they all run into one. The doctrine announced 
pleased me. My native indolence found this a 
convenient bulwark, and I were not the artful 
man my family has been trained (by me) to think 
me if I heed not so salutary a suggestion, and so 
the carrying of a long string of fish seems to me 
to be running directly in the face of Providence — 
a thing I design not to do. 

No, my irritation, if that be the correct word 
to characterize my attitude when the bright lad 
shot his arrow of "Did you get any thing .f^" 
straight into me, was not a sullen dislike to being 
caught catchless, but a settled quarrel I have 
with the malutility of the question, "Did you 
get anything.'^" which is vilely familiar on all 
roadways either of land or water. You are al- 
ways being stung with that deer fly or punctured 
by that songbird called the mosquito. Many a 

day have men who should have known better and 

108 



*^DID YOU GET ANYTHING?" 

women fair to see seriously prodded me with that 
irritating interrogatory, "Did you get anything?" 
As if a body ever went anywhere and got nothing ! 
They mean — I know what they mean. I am no 
lackwit (by my own assertion); they mean: Did 
I get a fish? That is all they mean, as if I, who 
once wrote a poem, could be tied down to a 
wriggling line in the water when the sky is over 
me and under me; over me dappled with wind 
clouds vagrant, ethereal, far-voyaging with blue, 
more blue and far-blue, blue down to the land 
edge, blue to the sky-top; and under me as I 
drifted with idle content, an inverted sky drifted 
with clouds far, free, and a-voyaging between two 
sky azures, and then to have such a celestial voyage 
broken into by a dull apathy of *'Did you get any- 
thing?" What opaque nothing am I not to get 
anything when heaven engulfs me in its splendor 
and amplitude? What is a puny bass tugging at 
my line matched with the sky tugging at my soul 
and calling softly, ever softly, "Fly to me and fly 
in me, far, farther, and datelessly"? 

I always get something. All days are good for 
my fishing whether I fish by stream or dry lando 
All my hooks are baited and some will be bound to 
catch. If I miss a fish, I shall catch a lily, or a 
cloud or a spindrift from a wild -washed sea-wave, 
or a stream, or a glimpse into the soul where are 
horizon bars which push backward %^ery far be- 
hind all stars and open for a moment and then 

close, not to be opened again. Shall I not be 

109 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

radiant as June when all sweetness of living ex- 
hales odors like white clover, and shall I, like 
blowing wind, grasp, and get nothing? Am I as 
dreamless as that comes to? I pray the kind God 
to forbid it. Fishing is not the climax of my life: 
living is the climax of my life. The highest things 
beckon at my door and ask a drink from the living 
spring that warbles like birds in the hedge-row 
and I may not shut my door and lock it. I will sit 
out in front of my tent like Abraham long ago, 
and then no angels can pass by without hearing 
the hail of my invitation. I like lying in wait for 
angels, for morning and shadows, and the wild 
fleur-de-lis watching its gentle shadow in the 
stream, and the foam of virgin's bower and the 
sheen of vivid green on the lichens and the invi- 
tation on anything and everything. I will let no 
angel pass my door unaccosted. I was born for 
the sootless paths where stars with stars go jour- 
neying, and shall I be permitted to knit my soul 
to earthliness? 

And shall I call "getting something" to be get- 
ting the unillustrious and the deficient? Is not a 
poem more to me than a bank account and the 
lilt of an unknown bird a fairer Eldorado than a 
hill of gold? Nor is it that I care not for the cash 
values of things. Cash buys things folks need. 
Christmases and a home that bids the storms 
defiance, and in its place and time a little space 
in God's Acre, above which wander the dusks 

and daysprings and where beloveds lie in quiet- 

110 * 



"DID YOU GET ANYTHING?" 

ness with all the hopes of resurrections, tearless 
and tender — these certainly require money — some 
money. And I break no puny lance with pros- 
perity. I deride no civilization. I mope not 
where the bats soot the night with sultry and 
sooty wing. But to be shut in by a pocketbook, 
or more aptly, shut in a pocketbook, I resent. I 
strictly refuse to be bound in by the little. I who 
am built for the larger and the bewildering. 

Did I get anything .f^ That is no question for 
the likes of me. I always get something. Every 
rainbow has its pot of gold at either end, and 
every flock of birds its music and every rookery 
its dissonant melody and every night and every 
day its summons. 

If a body have what Walter Savage Landor, 
speaking of Robert Browning, called the "inquir- 
ing eye," all roads shall lead somewhere and some- 
where subtly sublime. I know many of them, 
having wandered along them, and many I have 
not loitered on. I make prophecy for the having 
so often invited my soul to my soul's content. 
There are no barren ways. I have youth enough 
to know that. Is it not drearily true that "Did 
you get any thing .f^" means with hideous impor- 
tunity, "Did you get some little thing.?" It is a 
narrowing of the souFs eyes to slits, a squint of 
scrutiny to behold the unessential. 

Those things the Gentiles seek (recalling the 

gentle indictment of Jesus) are not bad, but just 

little scrawny things instead of brawny things, 

111 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

Were I choosing a room in a spacious hotel, I 
should not choose a room overlooking the gables 
of the city nor the roofs of the town, but should 
choose a room overlooking the ravishment of the 
sea. I have occupied a room that gave full view 
of the pile of de-vegetabled cans and superan- 
nuated rubbish and full-breath garbage cans, nor 
did I demur. They were necessaries; and the 
coverlet of the night covered them over. Better 
empty cans in which wholesome foods have been 
stored by a ripe civilization than the mussel- 
shell heaps inside an aboriginal cave. I quarrel 
not with the patches on the coat of civilization, 
yet I do not take my holidays inspecting its 
dilapidated mops and brooms. I would not be 
inattentive to the lowliest temporalities; but to 
the things eternal am I knit by kinships ever- 
lasting. 

They hold my dreams by dusk and day and 
rivet my attention like a pageant of angels. I 
am heading their way. No tarnishment is on 
this unfitful firmament of my soul. The longer it 
lasts the more rare it grows. I know what I am 
about. I am about with my soul. We are wool- 
gathering betimes, but it is wool from golden fleeces 
of yellow flowers or fields of harvested wheat or 
sands of dunes cast up by wind and sea, or desert 
blazing in the sun, or silver fleeces of water 
anemones or early spring stars of flowers or white 
souls of praying women shot through and through 

with the wonder and beauty of sacrifice — they not 

112 



''DID YOU GET ANYTHING?'* 

knowing it is sacrifice — woolgathering so enriching 
to the thought beyond raising sheep that nibble 
pastures to the ground, that we may turn them 
into mutton and to wool. Uncommercial gazers 
are my soul and I, but then the stars are fitted 
for such as watch, and the stars are high; and 
watching them will be bound to give the upward 
look. I count myself more rich in walking in dew- 
damp grasses on the porches of the night than 
owning an auto driveway of cement. The spring 
under the foot is like wearing slippers of moss; 
and a body becomes blood kinsman of the forest 
and stream. 

Did I get anything .f^ When the "morn was 
dew-pearled," when the boat wound in and out 
loiteringly as the stream, when the vision of the 
world's countenance was changed by the sun- 
burst of the morning and the song-burst of the 
birds, when I was going nowhere in particular 
nor for anything in particular, when a hidden bird 
on a leaning tree was speaking with the faintest 
voice, which resembled nothing so much as a 
silver hammer driving a silver nail to hang a dew- 
drop on, and another bird volleyed with the small 
artillery of "switchets, switchets, switchets," and 
an oriole plunked his syllables like a lot of marbles 
thrown in the water and some children were 
cramming a boat-full of hurricanes of voices and 
blasts of laughter and "Ouches" and "Oh, don'ts," 
and "Quit its" and wrigglings like a squirm of fish- 
worms on a dozen hooks — "Did I get anything?" 

113 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

I shall be angry ere I am aware. I always get 
something, always get plenty. I caught no fish, 
certainly not, but fun and laughter and free 
merry-making and talking back to the children 
and the birds and rowing the boat putteringly, 
and dawdling with the oars and gazing lingeringly 
on the vistas of wide water afar and hearing far 
off a curlew's call, and seeing a rail lift its clumsy 
flight of mellow chestnut body and wings, or 
"freezing" along the stream to fool me, I re- 
maining unfooled; and after dallying a while I 
will row out on the great water and beach my 
boat, and take cheery breakfast with my sweet 
family, for which the good God be thanked. 

And did I get anything.? Will that plebeian 
question never grow mannerly and subside into 
reputable silence.? Those always get something 
who go out with God for souFs delight. All days 
are days of the lading of those argosies, very 
opulent, which have voyaged beyond the sea- 
shores of the world and have had in their tattered 
sails the winds which blow from far back behind 
all stars: and the sails are freighted with odors 
blown from "the forget-me-nots of the angels." 



114 



XI 

CON AMORE 

Some old Latin phrases cling like the fragrance 
of a pressed rose which the fingers of love plucked 
long since and other hands laid in the leaves of a 
precious book, grown much more precious be- 
cause of the rose having its hiding place there 
these misty years and the fingers of love which 
plucked and gave the flower, long since crumbled 
into dust from which her plucking saved the rose. 
Mainly I would wade in the surge of our English 
speech as I would in the surf of the blue ocean 
when the wind drives the water shoreward re- 
joicingly. To see how foreign words and phrases, 
especially from contemporaneous languages, have 
all but vanished from our vernacular, is heartening 
to one who conceives the English-American speech 
to be the ruddiest, ruggedest tongue ever framed 
for the expression of universal thought. We can 
sit under our own language shadow, and rest con- 
tent. In myself I find the disposition to use a 
foreign phrase all but vanished. I should prefer 
"between us" to "inter nos" or "safe ground" to 
"terra firma" and "very privately" to "sub rosa." 

Of course in all our thought-moods there are 

traces of sweet irrationality. It is better so. That 

will be no happy day when we can con aloud our 

. 115 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

reasons and count them like dried prunes. While 
we remain a mystery to ourselves we are happy 
folks. In the interest of the eternal vitalities we 
must have bursts of unlooked-for glory on us like an 
evening cloud. Lest we be ossified we must not 
entirely be classified. So, why a body should slur 
a thousand phrases fetched from a venerable an- 
tiquity and sown to poetry and hallowed by the 
handling of eloquent voices grown silent, long, 
long ago, and fondly retain some other flower 
grown in the same old-fashioned garden, is quite 
beyond anybody to explain. Better so. It needs 
no explanation. It is a wild sprangle of vine 
throwing out tendrils venturesomely but beauti- 
fully. So do I fondly retain the old Latin phrase 
"con amore." "Out of Love" — the doing things 
not because we are goaded thereto but vagrantly, 
like a wandering water. That is con amore. We 
want to. That is con amore. 

We must do most things. Washing face and 
feet never arose out of a boy's disposition. This 
sprouts up through the scoriae of his indisposition. 
Dirt is a boy's natural element. Fond mothers 
who demur at such a slur upon their lads must 
recall they themselves never have been boys. 
Being a boy initiates into some Eleusinian mys- 
teries which even all the intuition of the woman 
mind cannot attain unto. This is not that the 
boy is brainy, it is that he is a boy. A boy takes 
to water. So does a frog; but in neither instance 

are we to infer it is for purposes of cleanliness. It 

116 



CON AMORE 

is for purpose of wetness. When a boy holds up 
two fingers by way of attesting that the water is 
good and should be indulged in and that the party 
of the second part should hurry up and come on 
and in, he is not expressing his judgment that 
this is his washday and that he greatly rejoices 
in the prospect of being in a cleansed state like 
his mother's Monday clothes. Verily, no. The 
remotest thing from the brain of Boyville is 
cleaning up. The "swimmin' hole" is scarcely a 
cleansing fount. It is too shallow, too dirty, too 
crowded with boys. A bath tub with crystal 
water does not entice the boy. The snowy bath 
tub and equally snowy towel along with the soap 
certified to float and be the delight of the little 
fairie, inhibits the boy. Not that he knows about 
"inhibits." He always is doing more things than 
he knows. Words never yet were a boy's strong 
point. Not words or their meaning or their spell- 
ing can be said to fascinate a boy. Washing his 
feet is in the same category, to wit, in the cate- 
gory of things society demands but which a boy 
abominates. Some things go by compulsion. 
Cleaning up is one of the boy's compulsions and 
revoltings. 

The "swimmin' hole," not to be lured out of 
the path across the pasture which leads to that 
sociable but unhygienic spot, is a tribute to a 
boy's sense of frolic, of camaraderie, of acrobatics, 
of "You dasn't and I dast," but never to a sense 
of cleaning up. To be brief and accurate, having 

117 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

this long time been a boy, with a boy washing is 
a concession to the Dagon of respectabihty and 
community notion of cleanHness, and is done under 
the rod — so to feel — while swimmin' is done "con 
amore." He does it as he "hollers," spontan- 
eously, sporadically, delightedly. For swimmin' 
no day has been discovered long enough. Night 
is always in a hurry, an unnecessary and inde- 
fensible hurry, to boys in the swimmin' hole. The 
run, the yell, the splash, the dive, the holding up 
the hands to give illusory certificate of so deep, 
the holding of dirty freckled nose with dirty 
freckled fingers by way of giving wary premoni- 
tion of the dive — all these things are done not 
out of sense of fitness, obligation, duty, high re- 
solve, nor disposition toward cleanliness, but just 
for fun, for the everlasting love of it and the ever- 
lasting fun of it. Con amore. 

To all such as ever have been boys I can by no 
lucubration nor quotations from poets give the 
expression of con amore so vividly and accurately 
as by the swimmin'-hole illustration. 

The doing things out of love for them as a frog 

sings through the night is a fine work in a fine 

life. We smart as with sunburn caught in water, 

under the eternal, "Now I must get to work." 

We are hounded. All kinds of curs bark at our 

heels and bite them, for our feet are bare. Was 

that what our placid friend, William Wordsworth, 

was debating inside his singular head when he 

said, "The world is too much with us"? I think 

118 



CON AMORE 

it was. Too many things take us in hand and 
bring us to book. We get a hid sense of slavery. 
We demur in the heart. And that is a real injury 
to character. What we demur at with the lips 
may or may not be injurious, though too much in- 
dulgence in the vocabulary of complaint is dele- 
terious. That soaks in. The mood of complaint 
in the heart soaks out. That is worse. To set 
volcanoes in the soul may or may not end in erup- 
tion, but necessarily will give a continuous heat, 
which is scarcely necessary considering how hot 
weather grows every summer. We need interior 
refrigerative processes, not so much to refrigerate 
as to gently cool, so the mosses may grow green 
on the north side of the tree and the fern may 
be ready to stoop to the dew drops which cluster 
on it in the night. We need a north side furnished 
for our souls where the lichens may gather on the 
boles of the forest trees and where shadows may 
be had at summer noons. 

We chafe under the gradual resentment of "I've 
got to." We are more than irritated by the 
sweaty hands of compulsion lying heavy on our 
naked shoulders. We watch the swallows making 
fun of the sky and want to be swallows just be- 
cause they seem to be gadding about obeying 
nobody. Doing nothing to the tune of some 
invisible and inaudible band playing "It's Fun to 
be Alive," we not seeing that the swallows are all 
out not didoing with the sky, as appears, but 
working for their board. They are all out after 

119 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

bugs. So are we. They set their industry to 
such a tumultuous tune, such a jocular irrational- 
ity, as that what they are at seems all sport and 
no work. Indeed, after having on many a day 
watched many a swallow by evening on church 
chimney, where they fly and fly with widening 
and then narrowing circles to get at last with a 
wild dash into their chimney home, and on many 
days drenched with sunshine over glimmering 
waters under the blue sky, the rippling waters, 
and the swaying flags tawn-green by the stream 
and the somnolent grasses scarce wakened by the 
wind while the swallows darted low against the 
stream or high against the azure, or on rare mo- 
ments when in a spirit of autumnal soliloquy a 
multitude of these airy vagrants of the air sat like 
people at a preaching — I, having watched these 
witching, willowy folk of the sky so many years 
in so many moods, am yet not able to do other 
than speculate whether they think they are work- 
ing for a living or are out fooling around. But 
we men seem to ourselves like men marching in a 
huge crushing army where we cannot step out of 
the ranks for a moment's space to drink by any 
wayside spring or kiss our little child who peers 
at us from the dusty march-edge. March we 
must. 

Nor is this attitude altogether mythical. Many 
things — well, put it broadly — most things are 
compulsion. We must eat, and clean up, and 
pay our bills. Not gluttony nor cleanliness nor 

120 



CON AMORE 

honesty sets us at these several tasks. To get 
on decently we are compelled to do them. We 
must get up, we must move on, we must play 
ball. Thanks to the good God, who himself works 
more than all of us, our work is both remunerative 
and pleasant to us. However, were it neither, we 
should be compelled to it by the compulsion of 
life — work on the rock pile or the work farm. We 
must breathe or die. We are in the vortex of 
compulsion. 

All the more are we needing some thing or 
things which we do for fun — con amore. To do a 
thing because I want to do it and don't have to. 
Kissing one's wife is to be classified here. It is 
downright fun. She may not want you to, but 
you know your business, hence the bussing pro- 
ceeds. You raise vegetables out of need of edibles; 
you raise flowers con amore. You like to see four 
o'clocks a-sleeping in the day to waken at the 
approach of evening, and morning glories awake 
of mornings and fast asleep till the morning comes 
again. You like petunias with their gentle frag- 
rance, and hollyhocks, and roses. You tuck your 
baby under your arm or hoist him to your shoulder 
not as a paid nurse but as a man at fun. 

The funs of life are worth studying. The auto 
is a part of the fun of strong men. Costly or not, 
it is quite worth while, for working America has 
played altogether too little. I love to see hard- 
worked men taking a sober spree with wife and 
child in a motor cheap or dear. I am never so en- 

121 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

grossed with whether they can afford it. They 
can't afford not to have fun. They ought to 
afford to have fun. Con amore pumping a tire or 
lying on your back under the car — the woman or 
women sitting by the road and the car and the 
man giving gratuitous advice to all three — this is 
life at the fun. "Running the car from the back 
seat" has already passed into a mature proverb 
in a jiffy. Women do not perform this service 
out of duty but con amore. It is whispered by 
some of their own sex that they like to. The like 
ends there. The man would omit that part of the 
fun; men, however, are known to be peculiar. No 
strong man, no man who does things in business, 
have I encountered who did not love to lay power- 
ful hands upon the wheel and feel the might of 
the engine respond to his control or to whom the 
purr of the engine, like a cat being petted, did 
not come like the voice of lutes. He likes to do 
it. He runs the car con amore. "Rather than 
eat" was the laconic saying of this kind of a man. 
I loved to hear him say it. I looked at the strong 
face, the steady eyes, his lines of business care, 
and then the care-lift like a lifted cloud which 
discloses the rising sun. This I saw and was glad, 
for his hours were long, his cares were many, his 
burdens persistent, his heart often heavy. Here's 
a lift to his load, a con amore stretch of road 
where the running is good and no traffic police- 
man is near to gauge the speed, wherefore away 
and a song transfused with laughter. 

122 . 



CON AMORE 

The fads men and women love, the collecting 
things, are con amore marks. For years I have 
read catalogues of collectors because in china, 
marquetry and buhl, coins, stamps, autographs, 
butterflies, old swords, firearms, flowers — no mat- 
ter what — in them I found winsome signs. Though 
I knew not the person I liked him. He had days 
off. His crotchet was humorous, not pathetic. 
WTien I hear about a collector his gravitation 
tugs at my planet till I am swung from my course. 

One man I know collects watches. They do 
not go. They had gone. He had them, littles 
and bigs in abundant store, and I loved to watch 
him watch them. He could run on about them in 
a topsy-turvy talk which chimed like an old clock 
on the stair. 

Another had violins. He did not play them 
which rendered his fad harmless. It was expen- 
sive, like collecting orchids (which some moneyed 
folk do). What a sweet con amore it was collect- 
ing mute music, which, long hushed, waited only 
for the mystic touch. He might by some lovely 
chance come upon a Strad, or some dreamy-eyed 
master from Cremona. I never see some violins 
in some dusty window where some stopped violin 
maker plies his trade, feeling at the throat for 
melody, without the tang of a musician in my 
hesitation. 'Tis good to love things just for love 
of things, to forget cash, the "will it pay," and 
all that grinding but necessary vocabulary of 
making a living. 

123 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

Those piscatorial folk, those followers of Saint 
Peter (in lying) and Ike Walton, who wrote of the 
gentility, docility, gentleness, and sweet human- 
ity of impaling worms and fishes, and because 
neither could speak thought he did God a service, 
such have I seen gathering a library of fishing 
books of every age and nature. Just so fishing 
was on the title, all was well. Though I fish not, 
I have a steady love for all those lovers of loiter- 
ing water or hurrying trout stream or evening- 
shadowed lake, or dimming river at the morning's 
murk. One lover of fishing I know. He is not 
young in years. He is wistfully young in heart. 
He would stand and cast and cast and cast while 
his boat would take him a free ride as he did so. 
He would sit in the burning sun a long day and 
troll. He would take a delight bright as the flash 
of sunlight through an angry cloud, in the tug 
and the fuss and the fight and the struggle of a 
fish against a man, and tired as if he had been on 
long soldier march (whereof he knew much by 
long-past battles) he would march home of the 
evening smiling like a kid of fifteen and sleep the 
night through with a smile on his dear face, and 
one who loved him much ventured the hope one 
day, that in heaven God might have some sweet 
water for this happy fisherman to dawdle by and 
dream over and fish in where endless sunlight 
gave a day long enough for such a jocund fisher- 
man to have his fun through. 

Another lad, of eighty when I knew him, who 

124 



CON AMORE 

when he was waiting to die would gather about 
him his hooks and lines and flies and reels and, 
with feeble though loving fingers, would fumble 
among what the undreaming would have thought 
rubbish, but what God counted hidden laughter. 
And when I called one day he blew in my face 
the memory of happy summers with hook and line 
and laughing loitering by many a laughing water 
and showed me mementoes of sunny summers and 
unforgotten streams and pine shadows on the toss- 
ing plunges of riotous rapids hurrying from the 
drifts of hidden snows. With a fluttering voice 
like a wounded thing he would rehearse how this 
caught such and this other such, and so on, 
lingeringly and laughingly, his eyes all the time 
like glint of running waters, while his voice hung 
on some incident like a singer's on some beloved 
note, and at the last he gave me a line he himself 
had braided from horsehair (an art, he said, which 
would die with him), and as he chuckled over 
years of summer days and innumerable fishings I 
could see the gentle Fisherman whose other name 
is Christ standing behind the lad-man and smiling 
brightly, and hear him saying softly, like a caress, 
"I will make you fishers"; and as in parting I 
prayed that when this dear fisherman stood on 
the bank of that wild water where no fisherman 
casts a line the good Christ would make a way 
for him across that stormy waste into that tender 
sunrise where the wide river runs, called by the 

angels The River of God; and the sweet old fisher- 

125 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

man took my hand at the prayer end and kissed 
it. Nor have I seen him since he met Christ at 
the crossing and crossed with him. 

Con amore — haunting store windows to catch 
the gleam of precious stones. Con amore — 
standing with hands behind him clasped in a 
nervous clasping and unclasping in whispered 
gladness watching the pictures in the art win- 
dows. Con amore — childless women watching 
with hungry eyes children and babies in a park 
where babies are more numerous than flowers, 
watching with hungry, feasting eyes, covetous, 
beautiful mother-woman eyes, and wanting them 
all. One of these sweet con-amorists I know who 
adopted three trivial orphans of one mother be- 
cause she could not bear to see them separated. 
Sweet collector of motherless babes, thy God sees 
thee through his tears what time thou doest such 
sweet deeds, for so doth his well-beloved Son. 

Con amore — and a man I know whose means 
are ample collects old watch seals and crests on 
sardonyx, and he has permitted my right hand to 
stumble around in a bag which contained two 
thousand seals (he stood close, and I thank him 
for having delivered me from temptation). Con 
amore — and my friend's wall is hung with etch- 
ings, etchings, etchings, more etchings. How his 
dear eyes make merry like a yuletide when he 
goes from one to one and like a man talking to 
himself in quiet sleep rehearses how this was found 

here and this there, and how he came upon that, 

126 



CON AMORE 

until it is like hearing some one you love play 
softly on an organ in the twilight that neighbors 
on the dark. 

Con amore — and one friend has a collection of 
sunsets in his soul. They are all framed in mem- 
ory. He has collected them from Spitzbergen to 
the South Sea. He has seen them on headland 
and prairie. He has torn them out, a leaf from 
the picture book of the years, and has hung them 
in his soul's art gallery. He says he will take 
them with him to heaven and show them to God; 
and I think he will. 

Con amore — there is where the book lovers 
gather and smell of ancient pages as if they smelt 
of mignonette, and finger rare bindings, or grow 
jubilant over first editions and hunt for some 
certain book which defies them, or grow gar- 
rulous over some beautiful page of manuscript 
the scribe whereof has been fast asleep in some 
meek monastery so long that the writing desk has 
forgotten that ever he wrote there. Such folks 
fondle books as curls on a child's topsy-turvy 
head. What a genial insanity is on these book 
collectors, these custodians of the world's yester- 
days of knowledge and of dreams! I love them 
all. 

These con-amorists — I know them all without 

introduction. They constitute an imperishable 

company. Little things delight them as they do 

idiots and children. Smiles are lambent on their 

looks like music on hidden water. They can 

127 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

foreignize their souls quicker than a dove can take 
its flight. They forget where they are, how tired 
or how old, their fever is put out and all their 
days become one shining yesterday and all yes- 
terdays become to-morrows. These are the quiet 
dwellers in the Con Amore Land. 

And without intent all of us go wandering into 
Con Amore Land. The mothers have found it 
with their babes. The men have found it with 
their sweethearts and their wives. Maidens and 
matrons have found it with their beloveds. In 
that dear land where Love hath empery all things 
move effortlessly like the weaving of a day dawn. 
All things Love does she does for love. Her hands 
are hard with toiling, often bleeding and dying at 
the task, yet are unwearied as an angel's wings. 
How sweet it is to affirm that out of love Life's 
larger issues are all shaped. "My heart aches 
so," said a woman to me the other day, "because 
four children I took to rear because they were 
motherless and fatherless are all gone from me. 
When can I ease my pain.f^" 

"They were burdens," I said, "these many, 
many years, and you had children of your own, 
and now you may rest a little of an afternoon." 

I said it not as thinking so, but by way of pro- 
voking her heart and lips to speak poetry. And 
they did, for she was swift to reply: "They were 
no trouble. All my trouble is that they are gone." 

And I wist not a woman spake, but thought an 

angel sang. 

128 



CON AMORE 

Out of love — sheer con amore — is our love to 
God. A freshet wide-flowing, mad-musicked, 
swift running is the love we know to God. Not 
out of duty but out of love is the south land of 
Eternity contrived. We should love God. Yet 
not here Hes the ineffable music of Redemption. 
We love to love Him. As the loving mother and 
father, so loving God is no compulsion, but we 
spring to it as the birds spring to dawn. We 
spring to it as the water lifts to its rainbow. We 
spring to it as Kps to their kiss. We spring to it 
as the wild sea to its melody. We spring to it as 
the woman to the long-absent breast of her soldier 
husband. We spring on it as the Resurrection to 
the Voice of God. 

Con amore. We love the Lord not as told to, 
not as duty-bound to, but as those nigh spent in 
the sea-wrath are caught to a strong man's heart 
and when they thought to lie in the breast of 
Death are landed on the Heart of Life. 

Out of love men and women long since clad 
themselves in martyr robes and washed their 
hands and face in fire nor thought themselves 
martyrs, but only favored of the Lord to witness 
so. Out of love! 

Out of love I battle by the cross and take God 
to my heart as the night does the dew. 

Con amore, O Christ! Con amore! 



129 



XII 
*'AND TO ALL POINTS BEYOND" 

A RAILROAD station has not been set down 
among the habitations of poetry. Search all the 
guidebooks which chronicle the places of solace in 
the Land of Dreams and never a finger will point 
to a railway depot. I cannot find it in my heart to 
blame them. Railroads are not evident poetries. 
They are comfortable methods of transportation 
and represent the highest type of utility. For 
railroad ties and railroad rolling-stock and stead- 
fast purpose to serve the race I cherish a respect 
that cannot be set down in words. The great 
Turner has a great picture to figure transporta- 
tion, which is the nearest station to poetry at 
which a railroad train has ever arrived. But, 
then, Turner could idealize anything. He was 
an infinite idealization and certainly an infinite 
idealizer. Himself was utility touched with the 
infinite. 

It grieves my spirit more than I can say to 
recall how, whatever the nobility of structure of 
a depot, it has no aesthetic thrill for the soul. The 
Pennsylvania Station in New York city is in many 
regards an adventure in architecture incompara- 
ble on this continent. Its massive pillars, its ex- 

130 



"AND TO ALL POINTS BEYOND** 

traordinary concourse, its splendid roominess, its 
compulsion of nature, its conquest of the Hudson 
River, its taking calm control of all comforts for 
the use of travelers, challenges even the stupid to 
admiration. It is worth going round the world 
to see and is more worthy than all pyramids and 
coliseums. Yet do the sphinx and the pyramids 
and the coliseum still stand in the midst of the 
landscape of human wonder, while this place of 
transit is unacclaimed by even imaginative trav- 
elers. 

The reason indubitably is that utility is one 
thing and poetry is another thing. They scarcely 
mix, at least not in architecture. Utility has its 
laurels It wears a crown of gold. Poetry has its 
coronet. It is the withering petals of wild flowers, 
yet outlasts all crowns of gold. You cannot have 
everything. The railroad builder does a stupen- 
dous work. He is an achiever all but unapproach- 
able. It is not to be thought that he should write 
sonorous sentences outsounding stormy seas, as 
Milton has done in prose and poetry. There are 
realms and realms. It would be scarcely fair to 
have one man lord it over all realms. Only the 
sun does that. Commerce is one name; poetry is 
another. They must not make faces at one 
another. That is not polite. "He hath his work, 
I mine," reads the high poem "Ulysses"; and the 
verdict is ultimate. 

And the railroad station is not written down in 
the Forest of Arden nor in the Islands of Hes- 

131 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

perides nor in that Indian Summer Land of 
Utopia. Nevertheless, it must not murmur but 
rest content, seeing it has had its abundant 
service and may well be satisfied. 

Notwithstanding ! 

We must ever keep that word of our human 
dictionary lying close at hand like a dictionary 
when we spell correctly. At times least expected 
we shall be called upon to use it. The reason is 
the unreasonableness of life. Life is a radiant 
thing whether at a railroad station or a lover's 
tryst. '^ Effulgence is apt to put in an appearance 
on any beclouded day. A rush of rapture may be 
looked for solely because there is somewhere a 
sun. Whatever the place or shadow, life is apt to 
spread wings and utter song. A stable is not 
quite a house of poetry, yet we know how the 
Poet of Poets was born there among the soft- 
breathed cattle. Since, which event we are wist- 
ful to keep our "Notwithstanding" close at hand 
like a keepsake from one we greatly loved and 
lost. We may need to kiss it or weep over it 
smilingly any moment. There are no set moments 
for Life's music to break into carols. 

So then, notwithstanding, a railway station is 
not a flower bed where poetry is set to break into 
sudden and blissful bloom, it sometimes does 
break into blossom there. When the card of an- 
nouncement of time for trains to depart, where 
the name of the railroad and the names of the 
places of considerable importance are set down, 

132 



"AND TO ALL POINTS BEYOND" 

after a recitation of many names you may some- 
times read, "And to all points beyond." 

I recall the first time that announcement 
caught my eyes, how it lifted me into ecstasy. A 
railway station may not be a fit place for ecstasy, 
as the reader may be mentally suggesting, and I 
will not be disputatious. My points of ecstasy 
are not all charted. They come like an unlooked- 
for loveliness on a hidden river. In a railroad 
station when a boy at the front where battle 
spills its tides of death, was reported killed but 
was not, and you see the meeting of the soldier 
lad and father and mother when the soldier lad 
comes home wounded, pale, prison-worn, and in 
the railroad station their glory of reunion sweeps 
over them like an illustrious sunup; then such as 
witness the scene know that poetry has never had 
a loftier chariot in which to ride than the crowded, 
unpoetic depot. 

That day and many a recurring day when that 
legend of the road smiled out at me like a wild 
flower in the spring woods, I have wandered 
through crushing throngs as if I wandered through 
wide fields sown to asphodels and amaranths. I 
forgot surly and wearying journeys and throngs 
of sweaty passengers getting on the train and ojff, 
and I climb invisible Alps and wander beside new 
rivers not named in any earth geography and ad- 
venture into far countries where no traveler has 
adventured. The railroad card has gripped my 

hand till the bones in the fingers crack and the 

133 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

fingers ache and bleed and I am clutched with a 
vast desire, to wit, the tug of the Infinite. 

"And to all points beyond." That is in ac- 
tuality where any man's real journey begins. 
That is his station. He is en route "To all points 
beyond." Anybody can go somewhere: only un- 
usual folk can go everywhere. Where the jour- 
ney stops is really where the journey begins. 

If one were to select a schoolroom for thought, 
would it be a depot .^ Hardly. Yet here it is. A 
thought belted like a knight for far adventure. 
"And to all points beyond." Should a railroad 
be farther going than the soul of woman and of 
man? Shall a railroad have far points along its 
run and man remain barely a local incident.'^ To 
suggest it is a parody on all high things and holy, 
whereas life is not parody; life is poetry. 

Soul is headed "To all points beyond." Life is 
on a very long quest. There is where all ma- 
terialized theologies are bankrupts. They have no 
provision for the quest of the soul back of visible 
horizons, nor for it to touch at "all points be- 
yond." They are glib and chipper about nearby 
points. They can recite like a little child its 
Mother Goose rhymes, the names of all the little 
towns, the places where starch is made or glue or 
chocolate bars or window screens or window glass, 
the towns where the roundhouses are and the 
division points on the road, the funny little sta- 
tions of "much-ado about nothing"; but the 
stately places, the headlands where the golden 

134 



"AND TO ALL POINTS BEYOND" 

glory burns radiant like autumn, the trifling ham- 
let where some great soul waked or slept, the 
farmstead where some sweet woman died of un- 
requited love and wore a pathway like an angel's 
street to some dear grave where her tears of hope 
and heartache watered the grave, the town where 
grows the trunk called Struggle, the Hill called 
Hope, and the Vineyard where grow the Eshcol 
grapes and where the great Vinegrower tramped 
out the grapes of wrath alone, the town called 
Mansoul, or the mountains named Delectable, 
or the fair prospect the angels call The Land of 
Beulah — those dear places of longing and re- 
membrance and holy hope the guides for travelers 
know nothing of. They say with self-satisfied 
voice, "These are not set down on our timecard, 
which is revised to date, quite modern, with each 
smallest new place set down." They call harshly 
like a train caller in a roomy station, stridently, 
the puny places on the puny timecard, but have 
no "points beyond." The little car lines that run 
through a sugar plantation or to a nearby lumber 
camp or to a summer merry-go-round are not the 
railways for the soul. The soul must take long 
trips and arduous. The martyrs tramped long 
roads with bleeding feet and bleeding lips, yet 
singing feet and singing lips. The short road is 
ineffectual. For turtles it may suffice but not for 
birds of passage or for far sailing ships. The 
lapping of water on the strand has a faraway 

voice, a yearning look and mood: "Outward" is 

135 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

what it whispers. The voices of aspiration are 
seldom clangorous. They are half -hushed silences. 
They do not cry in the market places, having a 
subduedness like falling shadows. There is a se- 
crecy in all large matters. So is it that the night 
to many has a manlier ministry than the day. It 
has rooms of silence, mystery, unfolding. They 
are as the winter when all seeds are silent in the 
frozen ground with never an intimation of what 
sort the seed may be or even that it is. No wisest 
wisdom can tell when or where spring flowers shall 
in glad spring spring up. Mystery puts finger 
across its lips. No secret is told. All wonder has 
silences more musical than music. 

These know-alls of the road of life use mega- 
phones too much. Megaphones are for the sight- 
seeing car through city ways. They are not fitted 
for the solemn solitudes where the mountains stay 
and where the pines give forth at one breath odors 
and music. There is no sound of machinery when 
the lilies weave their garments of starlight or of 
snow; and the thorns of the crown of thorns were 
not shaped on an anvil to the hammer's voice. 
These noisy pointers of travelers to no-where- 
much, methinks they do profess too much. Their 
voice is still high, vociferous, strident, raucous, 
but their vocabulary is limited. They have not 
acquired the words of the journey. They are like 
the little child who can tell you who lives next 
door but who has no knowledge of the town where 

Shakespeare was born and died nor the field 

136 



"AND TO ALL POINTS BEYOND" 

where Robbie Burns plowed up the mouse and 
the daisy. Shall a railroad timecard know more 
than a guide for man? Why should the man who 
knows so little be so severe with the man who 
knows so much? Why should the man who has 
never met God be so smilingly superior to the 
man who has heard God talk to him, who has 
God's secret hidden in his heart? Why should 
the little village be ironic with the metropolis? 
This is worthy inquiry. I protest, ignorance must 
not swagger so, nor the little man play so many 
tunes on his penny trumpet. Men of my genera- 
tion have been so absolutely sure in telHng how 
things were not and what themselves did not 
know, meantime many a woman kissing her babe 
to sleep and praying with her could have tutored 
them in a salutary theology filled with whispered 
and sung halleluiahs. Such souls have "points 
beyond" arranged for on their chosen journey. 
There is no break in the voice of the know-all, no 
choke in his throat. Huxley spent his last days 
in caring for flowers. And is that all? Could he 
find no sweeter gardening? I have known bent 
men and gray and young men in the morning of 
their years, but called to die; these have I known 
to grow heaven's lilies and a quiet heart and a 
settled trust and a radiant life which outshone 
rainbows and white suns. 

So many roads I encounter as I wander on un- 
unaccustomed ways which lead in to a farmhouse, 
and there they end. The roads so many minds 

137 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

travel lead to the farmhouse named Death and 
into a narrow valley with no way out. Shall we 
trust and choose for road makers those who build 
a road to a farmhouse, or were it better in wiser 
wisdom to employ for road-makers those spirits 
which build the road "To all points beyond"? 
across the continent, into all marts, beside all seas, 
to all high mountains of vision, through every 
lovely valley where singing streams fill the way 
with music? 

Ofttimes in my loiterings on summer streams my 
boat dawdles because my hands use the oars idly 
as not designing to hasten but to enjoy and see 
things in sky and stream and river edge, and, so 
loitering, I have seen climbing slowly to the sur- 
face of the water a misbegotten thing meant for 
the mud of the bottom of the stream and not at 
all for the shining surface where the sweet winds 
dream and the sunlight makes glory. What im- 
pels the crawling thing of the underworld to ad- 
venture so? Why stayed it not where it was 
born an ugly cannibal to prey on water-worms 
and dash about in its muddy depths at home 
in the slime and the ooze? To me there is some- 
thing inexpressibly pathetic and at the same time 
infinitely glad and heroic in this slimy advent at 
the surface of the summer stream. It had never 
been here before. Down in the roily depths its life 
had passed in worm contentment, its only eager- 
ness being the eagerness of hunger, a tiling of the 

slime and well content till now, when a new hunger 

138 



"AND TO ALL POINTS BEYOND" 

togged at its dim life, it grew restless as running 
water. The ooze was no longer its paradise. Its 
companionship with shadow and mud no longer 
gave it comfort. It had never risen. At the bot- 
tom of the stream was its home, sweet home. 
What knew it of any upward.^ It had no sky nor 
needed it. Slime begotten, it had slime happi- 
ness. And now. What is a "now" to a worm 
wriggling in the mire.'^ It has no now nor then. 
But now — the worm wants upward. It cranes its 
poor neck, lifts its poor, dull head a touch above 
the ooze. It eels a blind way to the ladder of a 
reed rooted in the mud which has been its only 
landscape — mud all. The worm feet begin the slow 
ascent out of its life-time home, away from its poor 
but accustomed ways, hungrily climbing to where 
it has never been and to what it knows not of, and 
to light and sky which it has not dreamed of, to 
sunshine glorious as joy. It climbs, climbs, 
tiredly, achingly, for a fatigue and a pain have 
invaded the wriggling climbing body, climbing 
dizzy ingly, for a strange drunkenness is on it, 
climbs tiredly, seeing it has never climbed before, 
and its dull feet linger on the shaking stair of the 
reed pushed to and fro by the blowing wind 
whereof the aspirant has no knowledge, howbeit, 
the worm climbs, climbs on and up. It is a long, 
grim journey for a worm and accustomed to no 
climbing. The beyond has gotten into its poor 
slime body. Why should a worm want to leave its 

worm home.^ There it has been happy, unaspiring. 

139 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

And now, Ah, that now keeps reappearing. It 
has come into the worm's vocabulary. Now. The 
poor, dogged thing keeps on. Fire is in its muddy 
feet, and they toil on whither they had never 
been. A sublime persistency is on this trivial and 
despised thing. It never would have coveted nor 
consented to such a trip before, but on now, 
tugged at by it knows not what, it climbs out of 
the ooze, up the stalk, up to the surface of the 
stream, above the surface of the stream. Its slow, 
slimy full length at last trembles and pauses. It 
surely will return. It has no business here. All 
is new and strange. The light won-ies it. The wind 
makes it shiver, and all things make it afraid. No 
mud, only sky and sunlight. No water, but sky. 
Turn, poor dull worm, make no excuse. You have 
had your escapade and can tell your journey to 
your family and friends, hasten back home. No, 
the dull worm does not return. It is out of its old 
element, all it knew or guessed, yet clings tena- 
ciously to its stairway of ascent, clings with blind 
tenacity while the reed rocks and the winds hurry 
and the sunlight blinds. Poor, grim, glorious trav- 
eler! Poor, grim, glorious soldier! I hail thee for 
the hero that thou art. 

Then a dizziness comes on and over this poor 
creature of anabasis; pains make it blind, yet it 
does not turn back, does not head downward into 
its old abyss, does not seek its elemental darkness, 
but barely clings, clings palpitatingly while a 
whirlwind of pain shakes the poor and shabby 

140 



"AND TO ALL POINTS BEYOND" 

house the worm has hitherto dwelt in gladly until, 
and now — O wonder! — the worn feet still cling 
pitifully, frightenedly, heroically to the reed, while 
from the worm body immerges a thing of light, a 
rainbow luster, a creature of wings and gossamer, 
a body of glancing lights, a creature not of mud 
and ooze provided for the sky; and the body it 
had is left a husk which still clings on the wind- 
blown reed ladder of the reed, and the dragon fly 
when its wings are dried plumes flight into an 
element it never knew and wings "To points be- 
yond." It has the sky, the glancing river, the 
swaying rushes, the forests rimming the river, the 
glory of the sun. Dragon fly it is called, named, 
and known — not the river worm. It is named 
after its flight **fly." That is its life and its joy. 
It flies. Wings have taken the place of feet. 
Feet it has but only for temporary alighting. So 
long it had its feet only that now it scarcely lights. 
Wings — all wings. It lights only for the laughter 
of renewed flight. 

When such an apocalypse is open to us, may 
not a wee worm teach man the lesson of the sky? 
A poor worm, sworn brother of the mud, left the 
mud and found a road to ^'points beyond." 

I confess the sight of this deserted husk clinging 
to the rush along the stream makes me weep like a 
motherless baby. I cannot see it often enough to 
quench the wonder of it. I had nearly said the 
miracle of it. For no miracle set down to the 
hands of the Son of God when he was barefoot 

141 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

here on our open road was quite as wondrous as 
this worm aspiring to the sky and wings. "To 
points beyond" seems not such an extravagant 
formula after this. A man should have as good a 
chance as a worm, think you? and as high a chance? 
No change of the mortal body to an immortal 
body whereof the Christ gave credential was equal 
in prodigy to this worm apocalypse. It had no 
light, no sky, no wings, nor' needed them, nor 
wanted them, then came to possess them all. And 
shall not the good God who put the passion for 
the sky and wings into the shambling worm give 
passion to man for a better world where wings 
shall take the place of tired feet and fretlessness 
shall preempt the place of care? 

I protest the rationalist and the materialist 
should go to school to the worm, which could 
teach them immeasurable diameters more than 
they have set down in their dull eyeless philosophy. 
Man is a chrysalis and shall emerge; death is a 
dizziness which comes over the body, the brain, 
when making transit from mortality to immor- 
tality. There is a change of azures; there is the 
espousal of the infinite; for this mortal shall put 
on immortality, and we shall be changed, in a mo- 
ment, in the twinkling of an eye, and God shall give 
a body as it shall please him. Cannot the dragon 
fly talk that talk after what has happened to him? 
I wot he could. Only, it remains for a redeemed 
man to say it in whose life abides the luxury of 
immortality. 

142 



"AND TO ALL POINTS BEYOND'* 

Such as make light of this radiant immortality, 
this change from little to large, from less to more, 
from under to upper, from a culdesac of death to 
the open roadway of immortality, to "All points 
beyond," turn out to be grim disciples of the mud 
and the worm could teach them beyond all they 
know and become their apostle. They trumpet so 
loudly they should be taught a gospel to pro- 
claim. "A little child shall lead them" was a 
somewhat whimsical word long ago uttered to 
those super-wise who knew so little. But now the 
irony is that a water worm shall be competent to 
lead these. If the water worm's groping be 
prophetic of its place in the azure, how shall we 
explain the restless human soul save by its open 
sky access "to all points beyond".'^ 

A daring aviator was shot down on the battle 

front not so long ago, and when they wrote of 

him after his death, in a tone of hushed wonder, 

they declared, "His home was in the sky, and he 

only lived to fly." That swift biography of a 

brave spirit, told by men who gave no heed to the 

vast poetry of what they set down, has drowned 

my heart in trumpet triumph time after time. 

"His home was in the sky, and he only lived to 

fly." Ah radiant vagrant of the upper spaces, 

shall I not learn of thee where I belong.^ Shall I 

for whom all points beyond are the sure hidings 

of my life be satisfied to let earth domineer over 

me, and stay a citizen where I am meant only to 

stay a day and a night, or shall 

143 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

"I pitch my tent like the Arabs 
And as silently steal away"? 

I who am girded and goaded for immortality? 

A worm must not transcend a man in hunger. 
Man must not be eyeless hke an owl when his 
hand is tugged at by the nail-pierced Hand of 
Immortality. 

Hear this passage from an old poem writ in an 
illuminated missal: 

"There are also celestial bodies, and bodies ter- 
restrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and 
the glory of the terrestrial is another. . . . And 
as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall 
also bear the image of the heavenly. . . . For 
this corruptible must put on incorruption, and 
this mortal must put on immortality." And with 
that voice of trumpets my soul is in accord. I 
know it from my need. I know it from those ra- 
diant dissatisfactions which urge me into clam- 
orous surgings after those things I have not yet 
secured and the God whom I shall see. The 
dragon fly must not shame me. The flying man 
of battle in the skies must not point brave finger 
at me in scorn. 

I will consult my soul when it is hushed in the 
presence of its passion for aspiration and for sun- 
rise and for starting to all points beyond. I will 
consult the Passion of the great spirits of the 
world, who knew time was not then' port but 
their port was eternity. I will consult the Great 

Intruder who came from heaven to tell to earthly 

144 



"AND TO ALL POINTS BEYOND" 

souls the bewildering company to which they were 
kinsfolk, and I will hear Him say, "Knowing that 
he came forth from the Father and that he must 
retire to the Father," and "I go to prepare a place 
for you, that where I am, there ye" — 
"And to all points beyond." 



145 



XIII 
SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

To those whose profoundest hfe is hid with 
Christ in God, friendship becomes a plain matter 
of eternity. To such, loving folks is beginning a 
love which knows no ending. It is this which sets 
Christian friendship quite apart from that of 
Cicero, who deemed himself connoisseur in friend- 
ship and luxuriated in it. Always to me in reading 
those Ciceronian lubrications there seems a touch 
of theatricality as if he were rehearsing a play with 
his face before a glass to see if he had tears at the 
opportune juncture and whether his pose were 
suitable and affecting to the audience. I do not 
feel him deep and tidal in his affection. In this 
judgment I may wrong him though I think not. 
Death clangs his frozen door in his face and makes 
him pale. His friends could not last long. They 
parted from him at the grave. "Finis" is written 
with ink of blood and tears at the grave's edge. 
Lastingness is what Ciceronian friendship lacks. 

What his friendship lacks Christian friendship 

has. To a Christian, death can only make faces 

that are more funny than ferocious. Christians 

do not make acquaintances: they make friends. 

They are to be on the long voyage together. All 

the hosts of friends we have known and all the 

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SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

hosts of friends we shall later know are vestured in 
this shoreless sociability and sanctity. Noth- 
ing like it has ever been conjured up by the smil- 
ing ingenuity and imagination of all the poets. 
Christianity monopolizes that surprising poetry. 
We be friends to stay friends in gloriam sempiter- 
nam. That puts wings of gold on our venture in 
friendship. We fly so very far. We feel like the 
doves which carry on their love-making in the 
sky. O, it is very wonderful! I feel the immen- 
sity of this enterprise and hear the laughter of the 
friendships that cannot die. 

"He is dead," newspapers say. Christian hope 
says, "He is alive f orevermore !" — and Christian 
hopes speak with sure veracity. 'Tis sunny 
weather our souls encounter when we have Jesus 
Christ and we be his brethren. 

I am here setting down some memorabilia of my 
heart concerning certain friends who have dipped 
into the darkness of the grave for a moment as 
swallows into a chimney in the dark. What those 
brethren were when the winds of death blew bois- 
terously, that they are. And the wild storm that 
seemed to blow them out has only been a favoring 
breath to fill their sails and blow them across the 
waters into their desired haven. They lived in 
God and they live with God. I deem it worthily 
worthwhile to set some of these men and women 
out in the glow of the firelight of the hearth of the 
heart to the end that we who tarry may remind 

ourselves of the necessary heavenliness of the place 

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THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

where such souls assemble. The assemblage of 
such creates a heaven. Distance, mutation, fear, 
non-friendship could not reside where such men are 
permanent citizens. Here they banished shadows 
and they conquered fear. What heaven would 
be with such as these in every sunny room re- 
quires no vaticination to conceive or portray. 
Their presence distills heavenly aroma and sets 
up angelic songs. We say as we look into such 
faces as I here limn, "No day can seem long with 
such companionship." 

In the morning I shall meet them — the morning 
of the wistful, unsetting day. 

"Dear Will Reed" 

Some adjectives thrust themselves on you when 
you are thinking of some people. They will not 
let you alone. They fairly tag around after you 
insisting that they must have their say. That 
word with regard to W. H. Reed I have used in 
the caption of this appreciation. "Dear" he was 
and is. He broke into your heart like soldiers into 
a city and once in you could not do without him. 
He was a lover of people, a hot lover. He was so 
eager to be loved and so worthy to be loved, and 
he was so challenging to affection. I recall when 
Charles B. Mitchell was pastor of Grand Avenue 
Church and I of Independence Avenue Church, 
how Brother Reed would regularly come to the 

Preachers' Meeting on Mondays and insist that 

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SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

the greatest sermon ever preached in Grand 
Avenue Church had been preached the day be- 
fore, and how, with eyes overflowing with tears, 
he would tell how many were at the altar the night 
before. He was loyal to his preacher and loyal to 
his friends, and not many men of his generation 
were more gifted in being loved than this blessed 
man, gone now to God. 

He was given to talking heterodoxy. It suited 
his quaint turn to jar people up by saying things; 
and he was happy when preachers or others would 
turn on him and give him a theological overhaul- 
ing. How he would laugh on both inside and out ! 
But his big laugh was on the inside. I have not 
often known a man with deeper faith at the heart. 
His heterodoxy was talk deep; his orthodoxy was 
heart deep. I loved to hear him argue what I 
knew he did not believe. 

I came to know him first when I was a professor 
in Baker University; and he was good to me and 
has been all these beautiful years since. For 
years, since the loss of his wife and son I have 
written him often, for as his blindness grew on 
him he had deepening longing for his friends. I 
had a long letter from him after he had arrived 
at Kansas City to die. He said sadly — for I had 
written him of some of those Kansas City people 
he loved as he loved the sky — "I have not been 
out to Kate and Kale's yet." He has not been 
there yet! The telegram which said he was near- 
ing the brink came to me long delayed. I think, 

149 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

however, that a letter of mine must have been in 
his hands nearing the last reading the dear lad 
did. I love to think he would walk out into the 
great beyond holding me in his heart. 

How glad I was that his decease came in Kan- 
sas City, where his heart had been all these years. 
He was at home in Kansas City wherever he 
dwelt. He will be as at home in the City, New 
Jerusalem, where he now is a dweller with the 
singing throng. 

I should like to hear him join the holy chorus. 
He will know the tune. 

Dear Will Reed! 

O Crystal Heart! 

I CANNOT let my friend of many years slip away 
into the Delectable Land without having my 
written word about him. I have had many 
spoken words about him and shall while I stay 
this side the sky. He is ever somewhere in my 
thoughts. He was so sociable, so apt to happen 
in as a body walked along the road, so unob- 
trusively familiar, so having the resemblance of a 
member of the household of one's thoughts and 
heart that it is not possible for him to be far 
away from the thought when thoughts are pure 
and worthy so as to feel at home with them. 
I have not known a more charming citizen of 
eternity than this wholesome minister of Christ 

and this lover of men and women. I have grown 

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SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

so used to thinking "How would that strike 
Naph?" that I do so now just as of yore. He has 
not stepped into the past tense. He was too glad 
a dweller in this present to himself become a part 
of yesterday. He must dwell in a tireless to-day. 
He was fond of books, but they come into his 
to-day to meet him. You cannot think of him 
staying back with Montaigne or of Montaigne 
having a very hard hold on his hand. He would 
read Montaigne to catch the flashes of that cold, 
shrewd, winter wind of caustic skepticism, and 
enjoyed it as not believing it, and laughing on out 
of an atmosphere where flowers could not bloom 
nor any fruits ripen. This friend of mine dwelt 
in a summerland. He was headed toward sum- 
mer and meant to dwell in it whether the weather 
did or not. The summer winds with wheat breath 
on them were his winds. He could extemporize 
a summer if one were not present. He chuckled 
so readily and so contagiously. I hear him at it 
now. They do not chuckle in heaven .^^ Said you 
so, friend .f^ Who told you.^ How came you so 
otherwise.^ Mistake not otherwiseness for wis- 
dom. They are not relatives nor even neighbors. 
Not chuckle in heaven .^^ Why not.'^ Are our finer 
traits to be denaturized by swimming across a 
brook called Death .^^ That indeed would be a 
pity. We should be more human than to have 
such vain imaginings about immortality. I con- 
ceive immortality to be that state of soul in the 

which all that was best in us has its unhindered, 

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THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

sunny way and what was least in us and crudest 
shall have been dispersed in the battle of dying. 
Our roomy, brotherly, brainy, beautiful selves 
shall have an eternal play of faculty and shall 
laugh out loud like a lad on a holiday. I should 
be loath to surmise that immortality were a color- 
less existence where individuality had lost its 
charm and the voice its recognizability. I should 
be broken-hearted to believe that a telephone and 
a phonograph should preserve the timbre of the 
voice and eternity lose it. Nay, what is most 
worth while lasts. The whimsical, like Charles 
Dickens characters, is a part of the extemporiza- 
tion of the soul which smacks of immortality. I 
called Naph, Pickwick. He looked like that 
kindly autocrat of good humor and good fellow- 
ship, and must have bought his hat in a Pickwick 
Shop, and Mr. Pickwick himself must have taught 
him how to wear the hat. I never could under- 
stand how he could balance it on his head as he 
did. I spoke to him about it one day, saying that 
bishops must be dressed a little episcopally. His 
reply was unepiscopal, but to the point though 
not to the hat. It was never just safe to tamper 
with Naphtali Luccock, though I liked to nag him 
once in a while not for his good but for my own. 

"Hello, Pickwick!" sang I, and he would shuflfle 
at his hat, hanging it jauntily on his head for a 
peg, give his eyeglasses a premonitory readjust- 
ment, and then his talk was up and his brain 
began to make sparks and shoot fireworks like a 

152 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

trolley wire wheel when ice is on the wire. It was 
good fun and holy profit to hear that bright brain 
whir when his attention was taunt and when he 
felt the good spur of colloquial suggestion. There 
was fun on then. I could take pages in reminis- 
cence of the fine badinage we had and the running 
of fun into the holy places of the heart; for be 
assured he knew how close against the heart-sob 
and the heart-ache was the banter and the jest. 
There are no remote neighborhoods to conversa- 
tion when immortal life has touched the tongue 
and immortal life is not a thing to be looked for- 
ward to of us Christians, but a thing to indulge 
in while we are on the underside of the cloud and 
a thing to be radiant over while we look toward 
its sunlit consummation in eternity. It was so 
we two enjoyed the other life. Not so much as 
talking at it or heading toward it as happening 
into the midst of it, or coming into the edge or 
core of it from some postern gate of present-day 
talk or funny mood. We had no trouble to get 
into high talk. There was plenty of it in frag- 
ments anywhere we went. Along streets where 
the wind wailed in autumn threnody, along bright 
ways where woods were glad with sunlight, down 
back stairs of companionship with the distresses 
of humanity, everywhere we happened into God 
and man and music and laughter and tears and 
hope bugle-breathed. We said not, "Let us be 
serious." We went wandering about and we had 
grave edge and sea beach and storm wind and 

153 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

cataract and cataclysm and the blue sky shooting 
out before us like a heavenly headland, and we 
heard not the horns of elfland faintly blowing as 
with Tennyson. He insisted the last time we had 
pictures taken at the same gallery that I spoiled 
his picture by laughing at him when the thing 
was happening to him. I insisted that such a 
suggestion was grotesque. Result, two men mak- 
ing exit giggling. 

I should suppose that a man like Naphtali 
Luccock makes heaven necessary and immortality 
compulsory. We do not dare to let him be blown 
out by the wind, for he is such a dancing light. 
His smile was gentle like a star. There was al- 
ways lamp-lighting when he came around. 

I suppose the good God has never been sweeter 
to all of us than when he made each of us to be 
different. At our best we are so dissimilar. Some 
folks are glad there are no more folks like us. I 
have not known many men to compare with 
Naphtali Luccock in his beautiful strength of 
individuality. 

God did a beautiful thing the day , he gave 
Naphtali Luccock birth. He did a beautiful thing 
for Methodism when he turned this keen brain, 
heavenly-minded, courteous gentleman loose 
amongst us. He had no twin. He was not like 
himself much of the time. He was like a dew- 
drop in the sun, ever shining but not shining with 
identical glory. 

How in the world he did teach mathematics I 

154 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

could never guess, because you just cannot think 
of his being connected with mathematical angu- 
larity and sphericity. So how he could teach 
mathematics I never knew, but, fortunately, I 
never met him in those sad times. I met him in 
better days when he had turned his attention 
from angles to religion and gospeling and when 
he went shining around one way and another 
bringing God's love up against man and woman 
and child for Christ's sake. I met him at the time 
his life was at luster and at flower like a star in 
bloom. 

I knew him very well. I journeyed with him a 
good deal, and I was with him many hours and in 
many circumstances, but I am delighted to say 
out loud here to-day that he never had one 
thought in the range of his variegated thinking 
that did not center in Jesus Christ the Lord. 

He did not continually talk religion; he did not 
have to. To talk religion is the best some of us 
can do. We do not know how to get rid of our 
piety unless we talk it. He never needed to talk 
religion — he lived it. I have seen him sweat it 
out, laugh it out, jest it out, and though his voice 
was not very courageous at best, I have heard 
him sing it out, and I have seen him shine it out 
with all the grace and loveliness of a beautiful 
morning. 

I have, for one, rejoiced that in the close of his 
life he was a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. There are a good many wise bishops, 

155 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

and some of them living, but I did not know one 
bishop that had a sweeter, deeper, more radiant 
familiarity with the Methodist spirit than Naph- 
tali Luccock. I did not know any man amongst 
us that knew more folks of the Methodist per- 
suasion in the uttermost parts of the earth save 
Bishop John W. Hamilton only. 

No man was ever more deeply loved, more sin- 
cerely and surely loved. He was admired by all 
such as had appreciation of fine mental gifts, of 
scintillant conversation, of wide and discriminat- 
ing reading, of high and chaste thought. He had 
somehow such grace and goodness of soul that he 
could perceive the things at once which we were 
working toward. And his life was so gracious 
and his gospel so kind and the twinkle of his eye so 
captivating and engaging and where his lightning 
would hit nobody knew. And then when it did 
hit no one could remember just what did hit him. 

It was so lovely to know him. One time he 
took sick and I did not know at what sanitarium 
he was, and so went traveling around and looking 
for him, and one morning I came slipping in on 
him, and there he sat up in bed with his jaundice- 
look and his haggard face and his cheeks falling 
in — a mere shadow of what he was. You remem- 
ber that, at his best, he was not very beautiful. I 
thought I would cheer him up and said, "Well, 
Naph, you certainly are a spectacle." 

He replied, "You did not have to come here to 

tell me that; I knew it before you came." 

156 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

"I came from our brother bishops to remon- 
strate on your looks," I said. 

"It does not lie with the brother bishops to 
adjust my looks," he replied. 

We talked for a while, and when I got ready to 
leave I stooped over suddenly and kissed him on 
the forehead, and he looked up at me and said, 
"Well, you are good in spots." 

I said, "I know it, thank you very much." 

"If you see any of the boys" — he called the 
bishops "the boys" — "give them my love." 

And now Naphtali Luccock has gone out where 
we cannot go and see him and we cannot lean 
down and kiss his forehead. 

I took his hand and said, "O Naph, life is 
sweeter because you are here." 

In that country where God lets us go when the 
sun goes down in our west, in that country where 
long shadows never darken along the fringes of 
nighttime, there we know that Naphtali Luccock 
is out looking around and seeing things and 
calling attention to them and remarking on 
them, and they are more enlightened in heaven: 
and I should not wonder if Naphtali Luccock 
is telling them how he thinks it looks and it 
might not be far from him to suggest some im- 
provements; and God will not misunderstand 
him. 

Naphtali Luccock is in the beautiful world of 
the saints of God. Our work is not yet finished. 
Our perplexities — we do not seem to know enough 

157 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

to get out from under — continue and will continue 
until we are called home. 

We are all glad this day that we knew this true 
man of God, for without any doubt we are all 
better because he was here, and to-day grief is at 
our heart because he is not here, but a great 
anthem of glad gladness is ours because we know 
where he stops and where he will spend the day 
and all the days following, and in the morning 
he will meet us when we walk in and he will say 
to us, "Welcome home." 

Ah, friend of mine, Naph by name. I hear you 
now with your chuckle in your throat and your 
crystal heart at voice and your eyes with frolic in 
them, and in the far, fair land where you are citi- 
zen and I shall a little later be; and you will not 
be changed but kept. The things I loved in you 
shall last like music in the trees and that wasteless 
fragrance of your brain-heart shall distill upon the 
air in kindly talk and genial ways and vast delight 
in things eternal, then as in days past but more, 
and He whom we both did love shall shine up 
before us not mystical but like a Morning Ever- 
lasting; and, laughing aloud, we shall kneel and 
worship and the Christ shall bid us stand. 

Albert J. Blackford 

Albert J. Blackford has moved. He has lately 

gone from this earthly scene, and I, who was 

formerly his pastor when he lived in Chicago, write 

this word. Space does not allow of writing of this 

158 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

soldier for his country and this lover of the Christ 
as it would be fitting to write. This I say: He 
was one of the sweetest, quietest Christian gen- 
tlemen I have been privileged to know in a happy 
lifetime given to knowing beautiful Christian men. 
In his last illness as he waked from his troubled 
sleep, he would inquire: "What station is this? 
What station is this?" And Christ met him and 
said, "This station is heaven," and Albert J. 
Blackford arose and went with Christ into the 
station for which he had been getting ready all 
his life. 

King David « 

How hard are we all hit in the passing from this 
battle scene into the infinite peace of the beautiful 
man named David H. Moore! We should be glad 
for him. And in our larger moods we are. For 
his sake the beautiful peace of the city of God is 
desirable. But for our sakes who loved him then 
and love him now, his going even into transcen- 
dent peace is a shipwreck. We wanted him here. 
We had heard "his voice midst rolling drums" of 
battle until we thought him necessary to the fray. 
What a brave soldier he was! Ever soldier! I 
could but think of him so each time I saw him 
and heard him, not because he was everlastingly 
giving the warrior shout, but because he crowded 
to the front of things like a cavalryman, sword 
in hand. 

I was accustomed to call him King David. It 

159 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

was his fault. He was so kingly and so Davidic in 
his sense of music. Poetry was on him; and he 
was poetry. I loved to consider him as lie sat in 
the bishops' meeting, seldom talking but always 
interested and alert. The last meeting of the 
Board of Bishops in San Diego, he came looking 
so thin and frail that he was like a picture of 
woundedness in battle. He was so frail that a 
seabreath might have blown him away, and when 
day by day at that meeting he came and sat 
through all the deliberations I would go to him 
and whisper: "King David, why don't you go to 
your room and rest.^^ You are too weary and 
weak to be here." And he would hold my hand 
caressingly and say, "Dear Brother Will, I know 
as well as anything that I can never be in this 
meeting again, and I want to be with the breth- 
ren all the time." How like him that was! So 
faithful to friendship, so leal in his loves, so set in 
his devotion to the Church and the Christ. He 
minded me somehow of Colonel Newcome with 
his dear head snowy and his face seamed as cut 
with battling swords and his head bowed rev- 
erently at the sound of the Name. Dear Colonel 
David H. Moore, you and Colonel Newcome will 
make good company walking the fields of victory 
in the far land where bugles blow no more the 
rush to war. 

The cheer of him, the hominess of him, the un- 
languor of his spirit, the swift assent to duty, the 

gentle courage, the unostentatious mood, the win- 

160 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

some smile, have they vanished from among us? 
Shall we meet at the General Conference and he 
not there? Shall we come to the next bishops' 
meeting and find his desk without the sweet, 
quiet, military figure behind it? How shall we 
get on? What sobs shall drown our voices as we 
try to say: "Has King David come yet? And 
why delays he?" We heard him say, "As I sit on 
my porch at *The Maples' I can see my wife's 
grave." He will sit there no more looking wist- 
fully at a grave. He is with her in a land where 
graves are never dug. How hale and triumphant 
the Christian faith sounds when men like "Dear 
King David" have stepped out into the foreign 
land called immortality, which is truly the only 
homeland on which our hearts may set store. 
Not looking at a beloved's grave, but looking at 
her face and both of them looking into the face 
of the Great Beloved. That is how it is. 

Bishop McDowell wrote me, "I wept for all of 
us yesterday at David's funeral." His eyes must 
have been very wet. We all loved him so. While 
the church grows men of this soul-sort it is worth 
while for the church to stay; and it will. 

We give thee good-morning, dear King David of 
the tuneful heart; and may we meet thee in thy 
morning after whiles. 

The Reverend James Boicourt 

This brave and true man and soldier and min- 
ister is taking his long rest in his eternal home. 

161 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

When an orphan as a little child I lived with this 
sweet soldier-preacher for a year, and it put a 
music of manhood into my .heart that has never 
silenced for a moment in all these years. He was 
to me at the time of his death the only earthly 
father I possessed, and my letters to him always 
began "Dear Father Boicourt" and his dear let- 
ters to me always began "Dear Willie," and, now 
I shall neither write him nor see him, only hold 
him in my heart like a star. 

He was all man. To think that a little lad 
could be so impressed that all, all these years a 
Christian minister's character has stayed with him 
like a beatitude is a sermon on the service charac- 
ter can render this world. It is the great preacher. 
James Boicourt was in ancestry a French Hugue- 
not driven hither by persecution; by the grace of 
America he was a patriot and soldier, and by the 
grace of God, a Methodist preacher. He lived a 
great and sinewy gospel. As a preacher he was 
wise, witty, keen in insight into things spiritual 
as well as men temporal, original, his words hav- 
ing a flavor of himself , humble but never cringing, 
devoted to his church and the Christian faith, 
given to song as a bobolink; and my remembrance 
as a child was to be wakened early in the morning 
by his singing about the house "Wrestling 
Jacob," and I can hear him now as I write. He 
has passed into the immortal minstrelsy of my 
heart and the heart of many another. 

No mean thing or selfish thing ever peeked 

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SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

around the corner of his life. He lived out in the 
open prairie of soul where you could see him from 
sky to sky. 

How God has enjoyed him these earthly years, 
and how God enjoys him now when he lives nearer 
him! 

I wish I might have seen that soldier of the 
cross march up the heavenly street when first he 
came to town where his Master, the Great Soldier, 
welcomed him into eternal life. 

Saint James 

It is the praise of the Christian Church that it 
does not need to look backward for its saints. It 
has them there but always has them now and 
here. They are the present tense of Christianity. 
Those Bible translators whose music was like a 
brook's laughter, who said that one Gospel was 
written by Saint Matthew, another by Saint 
Mark, another by Saint Luke, and a fourth by 
Saint John, were men who need no apologist for 
their sagacity. "Called to be saints" is one of 
those thoughts sown abroad through the New Tes- 
tament which needs no revision. That is the 
business of Christianity as touching souls. And 
we do well to listen to that music, for it is choral 
music and has good right to abide. There were 
giants in some days, but more assuredly there 
were saints in all days of nascent Christianity. We 

do not question that, rather vigorously and sing- 
les 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

ingly affirm it. We deprecate the slowness with 
which so many Christians accept the doctrine of 
the continuity of saints. There are more now 
than ever there were. 

And Methodism has its Saint James — Saint 
James Bashford. That sounds well on the lips of 
the church because it is accurate. That beautiful 
spirit has been continuously drinking of the heav- 
enly springs for many, many years. 

I shall always think of this modern saint as I 
saw him a little space ago at Grand Rapids where 
the bishops were in their semi-annual session. The 
big-brained Bashford was there. Nobody ever has 
questioned his brain being ample. He could spare 
some brains and have plenty left. Some of us 
could not. If accused of being statesman, his book 
on "China" would convict him. If accused of 
being educator, his work in Ohio Wesleyan and 
otherwhere would convict him. If accused of 
being a phenomenon in raising money for great 
causes, his history would convict him. If accused 
of being multi-related, his varied activities carried 
on simultaneously would convict him. If accused 
of having the blood of empire-builders in his veins, 
his work in the Orient would convict him. 

All these granted, yet not so do I love to think 
on him as I beheld him. At noon lunch the breth- 
ren were singing "Beloved, Now Are We the Sons 
of God," and Saint James was not singing, but 
rejoicing. As the song lifted, his spirit took a 

triumph march. He who has been thought of for 

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SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

years past as moving from speaker to speaker with 
his hand behind his ear so as to catch the speaker's 
words, was not in that attitude at the time I now 
recall. He sat head tilted back, lips open, eyes 
wide as if he were entering eternity and wishing 
to miss no glory, face shining like the face of a 
man in love, with rapture apparent on his features 
till my voice choked to silence as I watched him 
and my eyes spilled tears into my voice as I saw 
Saint James transfigured before me and had not 
been a whit surprised to have seen his garments 
grow white and glistening. He was not there. He 
was caught away in a rapture, and whether in the 
body or out of the body he knew not. "We are 
the sons of God" had hurled him out into its 
glory. 

That was Saint James Bashford. So shall he 
stand in the long eternal day and making melody 
and with his spirit shining out like a lit lamp and 
the language of glory bubbling from his lips. Not 
silent there ! There they can have the transfigured 
face and voice because they bear about upon them 
the marks of the Lord Jesus. 

The Reverend Wilbur F. Sheridan, G.G.M. 

With the Reverend Wilbur F. Sheridan, D.D., 
general secretary of the Epworth League of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, Methodist people 
of the entire w^orld are acquainted. I sometimes 

wonder if we are given to consider what it means 

165 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

to be a world Methodist, as our church has been 
from its birth. 

You can go no place where Methodism is and 
read (and Methodists are great readers), but that 
they will speak as familiarly about the leaders of 
the church as they do of their neighbors next door. 
Methodism is another name for world citizenship 
and world neighborliness and a woe will rest on 
any person or persons or community who attempts 
to reduce a world dominion to a purely local 
affair. Such a world church must not be pro- 
vincialized, but more now than ever must be left 
alone to its world- wideness. 

For many years the Reverend Wilbur F. Sheri- 
dan was a familiar name in church circles, and you 
could not name leading ministers of the denomi- 
nation and soul-winners who were wise and omit 
that name. He was a great fisher of men; he 
studied the art of capturing men alive, with the 
bait of the sincere gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
That is the page on which his story is recorded 
as a good minister of Jesus Christ; and his wife, 
the beloved of his heart, had part in this elect 
occupation. They together hunted for the lost 
sheep of the House of Israel. They speciaHzed 
in youth. He knew how to preach with directness 
and access to hearts and how to live a sunny, en- 
gaging life, which seemed to men the best preach- 
ing of the gospel. I am among the number of 
these who sincerely questioned whether a soul- 
winning pastor who can hold audiences in a large 

166 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

city should count it any promotion to be elected 
to any office, even the secretaryship of the Ep worth 
League, with all the breadth of service possible in 
that position. The church has no task the equal of 
the pastorate, the first-hand shepherding of souls. 
Every man who by the Grace of God can preach 
should be at that holy vocation. Administrators 
are many: preachers who can preach are few. 

I do not here dwell on the years of Dr. Sheri- 
dan's growing distinction, not because I might not, 
but because mine as I suppose is a larger office 
now. I do not underrate the service he gave the 
Epworth League. I suppose the Win-My-Chum 
motto was a stroke of Christian statesmanship 
which will live as long as the Epworth League 
lives. 

I wish to particularize on a section of his 
preacher life which is hidden from the knowledge 
of the church and the Epworth League and from 
his brother ministers, when in my judgment he 
contributed the noblest chapters in his ministerial 
career. I have not placed D.D. after Wilbur F. 
Sheridan's name, but G.G.M. As D.D. is ab- 
breviation for Doctor Divinitatis so G.G.M. is 
abbreviation for God's Good Man. It is the 
Heavenly title. It is God who conferred the de- 
gree. In the acts of some of the apostles the por- 
trait of Barnabas is painted thus: "He was a good 
man, full of faith and of the Holy Ghost." That 
is the unapproachable panegyric. It seems to us 
like a flute and like a flute's voice haunts us. I can 

167 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

never tire of this sweet and heartening biography. 
God's good man differs from this world's good 
man by these far-going additions: "Full of faith," 
and "Full of the Holy Ghost." This is an addi- 
tion of the infinite. They put the limitless into 
life, sweep it clear of mortality, and furnish it up 
with immortality and immortal incitements and 
inspirations, and serial doings of infinite life and 
procedure. Christianity is always thrusting the 
headland of life out into the infinite sea. In be- 
coming Christian you become partaker of the 
Life of God and are seen to engage with him in 
passionate longevity. 

Brother Sheridan, whose life just seemed well 
started, whose health was robustious, and amazingly 
full of energy, and was at a time when his body, 
which had all along been that of an athlete, seemed 
at its bodily best, all at once as if shot to the death 
by his arrow, he was bereaved of his strength by 
bodily collapse. I was intimate in my familiarity 
with his waning bodily power and with the immense 
increase of his soul. He was dwelling beside Lake 
Beautiful. There was set the only home he and his 
wife and children had ever owned — an unplastered 
summer house such as the rest of us lived in rejoic- 
ingly was this home, but the rich of the earth with 
their palaces in which to dwell doted on their habi- 
tation no more than this preacher and his family 
on their weather-boarded palace of privacy and 
peace and Christian domesticity. He changed his 

political citizenship to the State where this habi- 

168 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

tation of content was situated. He went thither 
to vote. And here was the place like a heavenly 
providence and a sweet provision for him when he 
was hit by the arrow of the chase. Here he and 
his wife went as to a covert from the tempest. He 
experienced not a quaver of a muscle nor the 
bending of a sinew as his voice communicated 
his thought with utmost ease to any congregation 
when at noon that voice was silenced and speech 
became with him a lost art. For him, to use the 
scripture with which he headed the last article 
his own hand ever wrote, was "sunset at noon." 
Paralysis settled on his voice first. His speech 
became tottering; then it crept along the body 
and throat, and hands and body, and at last 
everything was paralyzed except his heart and 
his brain. In those days when all his ambitions 
had collapsed like a cloud blown to bits by an 
angry wind. Brother Sheridan when most men 
would have shown the seamy side of life, leaped 
out and up the real thing he was, God's Good 
Man. 

Here I met them soon after the slow invasion of 
the disease began. Coming and going during the 
summertime I saw him, heard his speech while 
speech was not denied totally; saw him smile and 
rejoice in his home and his friends and his religion 
and his God; saw him when it was physically pos- 
sible to go on his delighted-in fishing trips from 
which he always brought home spoils and would 

show them to me passing our cottage in what I 

169 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

charged him with as a vainglorious spirit; saw 
him when he could not go fishing, but would 
slowly walk down to the landing (always with his 
sweet helpmate beside him) to see the other fisher- 
men bring their spoils, then in the winter would 
see him from time to time where he dwelt always 
looking forward to the spring when he with the 
migrant birds could fly again to Beside Lake Beau- 
tiful; saw him in summer when he could not walk, 
but was taken by his wife, or daughter or son, in 
his wheel -chair, to halt on the bridge of our little 
river and look at the youth and children bathing 
(he never lost his love for the youth) or at the 
running river adventuring to meet the lake, as 
his own life was or at Lake Beautiful or at the 
grave blue sky and then at his wife, and always 
smiling. Though it made me weep, it was happy 
tears I shed. He never preached a sermon like 
the sermon of his life in these last ebbing years. 
This was a sublime and compelling eloquence. 
We all felt it, answered to it like forest trees to 
forest winds. I bear record that during all these 
disheartening weeks, months, and years, I never 
heard or saw him murmur. His speech thickened, 
then disappeared; then he spelled his thoughts out 
to his wife on the fingers of his slowly moving hand 
in the alphabet of the dumb, then the fingers grew 
relentless and could be moved no more, then with 
the slowly moving hand he pointed toward a card 
having the alphabet printed on it, and so spelled 

out his thoughts but never a glum word spelled, 

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SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

nor an unsmiling look. Always a smile on his 
lips and a deeper smile in his eyes, and on sunny 
summer days he would sit wrapped up in his 
invalid's chair and watch the flowers grow which 
had been planted under his eyes, his wife being 
the sweet gardener. 

Their home was on a roadway which the winds 
had shoveled out with their unintermittent blow- 
ing, not a spear of grass thrust up through that 
well-traveled road; and in those days of his ap- 
proaching death he asked and received of his 
neighbors the permission to change the name of 
that gully of the winds to Happy Valley. So it is 
named, and so should it stay named white that 
valley stays. Oh it is beautiful ! Happy Valley — 
and Christ sauntered down that valley as in no 
sort of haste, to loiter with God's Good Man and 
bid him bide in perfect peace, because his heart 
was stayed on God. 

When I would blow in from my church journeys 
I always knew what he wanted. He wanted to 
know about the brethren, the churches, the church, 
and the jocose things of the road, the smiles 
touched with tears. How his eager eyes would 
stand alert as I would tell him about his brother 
ministers. He loved them just for themselves 
in those last days when he could see them 
no more. I prayed with them from time to 
time, his devout head bowed like the head of 
Colonel Newcome at prayers. When I would 
start away to hold a Conference he would 

171 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

say, with his dumb Hps speaking through his 
slowly moving fingers, "Give them my love." He 
was ever brave and unlamenting. His last day's 
vocabulary was free of all complaint. His sense 
of humor was keen, and late in his day when the 
sunset was clouding at the west, and my daughter 
who loved him much was telling how her little 
lad seemed so slow in learning to talk, his eyes 
sparkled and he slowly spelled on the alphabet 
card "H-e- i-s- a- b-o-y!" Enough said. 

He thought of death as a sweet adventure, 
but was in nothing morbid and not given to 
much talking about it, but smilingly looking for- 
ward to it as a caged bird to get a chance at 
the sky. Like Samson, Wilbur F. Sheridan slew 
more in death than in his life. On his birthday 
in a sanitarium, when his wife had celebrated the 
event with great laughter, which in her heart was 
a pond of tears, and he, glad but weary, was about 
to be put to bed, he spelled out on his hand to his 
wife, "Next birthday in heaven." And in her 
heart, she did not weep before him. Next birth- 
day! Heaven is a dear land of birthdays of 
God's Good Man. 

He could no longer walk, could no longer talk, 
he could no longer eat (for many months took his 
food through a tube). He could not move him- 
self, and must be handled as a piece of furni- 
ture, but was always thoughtful for others, and 
glad and full of the singing cheer of the gospel, 

his mind alert, his sense of humor regnant and his 

172 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

interest in the world's affairs strong as they had 
always been. After his morning's washing and 
dressing he would sit up in his chair and read 
the Chicago Tribune and the church papers. I 
wrote a letter rebuking him for being so worldly 
as to be reading the secular papers and his wife 
wrote how great was his laughter. 

He was transferred from the Saint Louis Con- 
ference to the Indiana Conference at the request 
of those brothers, for he had begun his preaching 
in Indiana and had been educated in De Pauw 
University. This was a great glee to his spirit, 
as it was a beautiful thing for those preachers 
to do. He wanted to be buried at Greencastle, 
where he was educated, and beside his dearest 
college friend dead long years before him. The 
bravery, Christian fortitude, and tenderness and 
loyalty of his wife can never be told. I look upon 
this domestic episode beside Lake Beautiful in 
the life of this God's Good Man in transit to 
beside the Eternal Sea as one of the sweetest love 
idyls I have ever known or read. He wrote his 
brethren of the Indiana Conference, "I cannot 
eat, nor walk, nor talk, but I can love and pray!" 

And now Brother Sheridan is setting up house- 
keeping in God's Happy Valley, where God's 
Good Men stay. 

"No chilly wind nor poisonous breath 
Can reach that blissful shore." 

Happy Valley, God's Happy Valley, Brother 

173 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

Sheridan a long-day smiling and no weeping, only 
song, and may there be pine trees growing near 
thy heart, and the river flowing shining near thee, 
and morning glories blooming which thine own 
hand had planted! 

Robert Forbes 

Robert Forbes is dead ! How it grieves us all to 
chronicle the fact! How lost we feel, knowing he 
is not around any more, and will not be ! 

That sturdy figure not to walk in General Con- 
ference halls; that vastly individual face not to 
front us; that magnificent head, full of strange 
and often subtle thought, not to lift its dome; 
those lips that knew how to frame eloquence and 
jest and happy repartee, not to distill smiles and 
laughter and eloquent periods again here! 

And "here" is the right word. Not here will he 
walk, talk, and inspire us, but there he is in hale 
health, and his eloquence has abundant range and 
opportunity. 

I saw this Boanerges last at the Northern Min- 
nesota Conference, to which he came a dying man 
— a wounded lion seeking his home place to die. 
His wife was with him returning from a long tour 
of speaking at Conferences on the Pacific Coast 
and the vast lands of the gospel this side; his son 
was summoned to his bedside to minister to him 
as son and physician; his brethren were in Con- 
ference assembled, but he was brought from car 

174 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

to hotel and could not come to Conference, being 
confined to his bed all the while, and was carried 
to the car again to go to Duluth, so dear to him, to 
die. A committee from the Conference was raised 
to bear him love and greetings, of which committee 
I was one. We came to this loved, honored, and 
smitten brother conveying somewhat of the bur- 
den of love committed to us, it falling to my lot 
as spokesman to voice in few words the tender 
message. His smile was wan, but sweet like 
autumn sunlight. A bit of fun fell from his lips. 
He thanks the committee with a weak but happy 
voice. I saw him at different times, and for a 
moment only, for he was very weak, but left him 
in good hope of kis rallying. 

As he Hved so we found him at his dying — a 
sturdy personality who had no lack of individual- 
ity. A tender, brusque man who loved his friends, 
his church, his Conference, his fellow ministers, 
with a wholeness and wholesomeness good to see. 
He and cant were no relations. His religion was 
not effusive, but had depth and uplift. It was 
ever good to hear him talk of the Holy Methodist 
Church. He meant it. He was unapologetic 
about his church love and life. He stood sturdily 
on. both feet while he walked and while he talked. 
It was not difficult to know where he stood on any 
business. 

He loved the special labor to which the church 
had set him; and his spiritual eyes ranged over 
this continent and its adjacent islands exploring 

175 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

where the Board of Home Missions and Church 
Extension should offer help. I hope I have the 
corporate title of his Board correctly, because I 
think he would well-nigh rise from his grave to 
rebuke me if I had it wrong. It was delicious to 
hear and see him rein anybody, everybody, upon 
a misnaming this Board he loved with the best 
blood of his heart. 

Robert Forbes, brave soul and true, sturdy and 
strong, we hope to meet you in that morning 
land. 

Bishop Charles W. Smith 

The daughter of our dear, dead master in the 
church wrote me this week, recalling to my re- 
membrance that preaching in Canton, Ohio, in 
the church of which her brother was the pastor, 
and in which William McKinley, of beautiful 
memory, had been a member, and over which 
Charles W. Smith had presided as pastor in gone- 
by days, I had said, referring to her dear father, 
that I feared every morning at waking I should 
hear that he had slipped away into the kingdom 
of God. It is thus I have felt for these years 
since I have known to my heart's great health, 
this blessed man whose character was shaped by 
such intimacy with the Christ. It is hard to think 
of the exit of such a man from our earthly scene. 
Clear it is that he is fit for any heavenly scene 
wherever placed, and that he will be sweetly at 

home in all heavenly company. It is also ap- 

176. 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

parent that we who tarry a Httle while have been 
immeasurably helped on the road to the better 
life by fellowship with this saintly lawyer in the 
things of God. 

And yet we are so lonesome without him. We 
want him to be hanging around. Where he went 
to and fro it was homelike for us to be. A body 
seldom thought of Charles W. Smith's regality of 
brain stature because there was such geniality in 
all his behavior. He was a tall tree of the forest, 
but cast such gentle shade and turned the heated 
summer into such restful shadow that we were 
allured by the comfort of him and not alarmed by 
the height of him. If a body thinks of the folks 
he has known a whole lifetime through, could his 
memory light on another just such as this genial, 
mighty brain? Brains are apt to gather frost. 
But his brain never got within reach of frost be- 
cause his heart and his brain always dwelt to- 
gether. How swift and sweet his laughter! how 
he shook when a gust of humor caught him! I 
can see him now, tickling over some funny thing 
said or done in his presence. This man to whom 
the statescraft of Methodism was an easy thing 
and deposited by him as the night skies deposit 
dew, yet walked in the kindly land of sociability. 
He who might have practiced remoteness, cus- 
tomarily practiced unremoteness. He had learned 
lovingkindness from his Master whose name is 
Christ. 

I grew to love him most, though I had admired 

177 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

him all my lifetime, when we sat on the joint 
Hymnal Commission, which made the present 
Methodist Hymnal for the two Methodisms; 
then it was that I grew to love him and feel him, 
since which happy time he has been in our home 
and blessed it by his radiancy; and he and I have 
dwelt in the same house of hospitality during 
bishops' meetings and other convocations and 
whenever I saw him he was the same aflFable, 
equable, brainy, brotherly man who never seemed 
to take his own intellect seriously but made his 
brain to be a brother with the brain of any such 
as chanced to be with him. He had dignity and 
suavity and great poise, and to the last atom of 
his body and his soul was Christian. 

At the General Conference when he was elected 
bishop I was extravagantly eager for his election, 
and had such joy in the fact that he and I were 
elected practically simultaneously, and it was my 
custom during these years to ask him anything 
hard that I couldn't manage and he would tell 
me what I needed to know, always gloving his 
knowledge and sequestering my ignorance by let- 
ting on that I knew as much about it as he did. 
This was the gentleman way of doing a favor and 
not letting on that he was doing any favor at all. 

Could anything be more winsome than the way 
he stepped out into God's Holy Land? After 
happy conferences, presiding over brethren with 
whom he was associated long since, so that to 
me he said on my inquiring after his fall work, 

178 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

"I never had three pleasanter conferences; every- 
thing was beautiful." And so delighted, and at 
rest in his own heart, without haste and without 
flurry, he stepped out into the saint's everlasting 
rest. The night before he died I bade him good 
night at the chancel of Metropolitan Church, 
Washington, where we clasped hands and his 
voice was sweet and his words were tender and I, 
little dreaming and he little dreaming, that the 
parting was until "the morning breaks and the 
shadows flee away," we bade each other "Good 
night" and when next I greet him we shall bid 
each other "Good morning." 

Franklin Hamilton 

Bishop Franklin Hamilton has changed his resi- 
dence. He now dwells in the kingdom of God in 
the city called New Jerusalem. His assignment 
was not made by the General Conference nor by 
the Board of Bishops, but by the Bishop and 
Shepherd of his soul. 

The bishops were in session, guests of his and 
the Methodism of Pittsburgh; but he could not 
come to bid them welcome. He was holding an 
interview with the Chief Shepherd. His courtesy, 
untaught, inbred, should have flowered in that 
hour of his brethren coming to his residential 
city. We all know how gracious a host he would 
have been, how refined and unaffected his words 
of welcome would have been. Now, these words 

179 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

of brotherly welcome are yet to be spoken, 
doubt not they will be uttered later when we shall, 
one by one, please God, arrive in the city where 
our brother has out-hasted us in arriving. He will 
not forget us in his residence in the Glad Con- 
tinent where he has now landed. 

We are all apprised how real is the loss Meth- 
odism sustains in the death of this big brain and 
purpose. He was beginning a new administration. 
He had held many places of taxing responsibility 
and each one honorably and well. Nowhere had 
he failed. He was honor student in Harvard, was 
class orator by the election of his class, was anni- 
versary orator by the election of its faculty at the 
two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Harvard 
University, and on that occasion spoke on the 
same platform with James Russell Lowell, and you 
may see the orations of both in the memorial vol- 
ume of that distinguished event. He studied in 
Europe. Though he had been student in Ger- 
many, unlike most of those Americans, he was 
not unaware of the German character, for from 
the first hour of the German breaking out on 
civilization he spoke stern words of condemnation 
of the chief atrocity of human history. He was 
master of a trained mind, and lover of high things 
and an unobtrusive specimen of a cultivated Amer- 
ican gentleman and Christian. 

I cannot well speak of him, seeing I loved him. 
My heart is blurred with tears on this and every 

remembrance of him. He came to the episcopacy 

180 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

trained for that service as few occupants of that 
position have been trained. How he invaded the 
new business is well known to such as had a mind 
to noble beginnings. It makes a body's heart 
tender as spring with iBrst violets to recall, as I 
recall, how he had taken up his residence in the 
hearts as well as in the esteem and plaudits of his 
brother ministers and laymen in the Pittsburgh 
region. 

He was American in his heart. He cared for the 
human race as Jesus taught him. He loved the 
black man, though truth to say he was not re- 
sponsible for that, seeing his distinguished brother. 
Bishop John W. Hamilton, has fathered him and 
brothered him, and no better friend to the black 
man has appeared since Livingstone and Lincoln 
than John W. Hamilton. And it is fitting that 
Franklin Hamilton's soldier son in Europe, whose 
safe landing was the last earthly concern he voiced, 
and the telegram announcing it was holden in his 
dead fond hand at his burial, chose to be an oflScer 
in a black regiment. 

I saw Franklin last after this wise: Before leav- 
ing Pittsburgh on my Master's business I called 
at the family residence, was admitted by the 
brave, beautiful widow who had so recently been 
a wife, was let into his room alone where my 
friend and your friend lay like a recumbent statue 
so strong and manly and as if asleep, and I said 
softly, "Friend, brother," but he was fast asleep 
and I did not waken him, but softly said, **I will 

181 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

see you another morning," and passed out into 
the sunshine blurred with my tears. 

And our brother is out on that landscape with- 
out the city where the leaves never will have 
autumnal tints nor come to withering, but where 
all the winds that blow are winds of spring and 
where the Shepherd of Souls leads his flock out in 
pastures infinite, where they are shepherded by 
the Voice of God. 

A friend of mine, a minister, was at his soldier 
son's deathbed, when the boy sleepily said, "ElisS 
me good-night, daddy, kiss me good-night," and 
his father leaned over and kissed his boy on the 
face and softly, tearfully, replied, "Good night, 
son," but his heavenly Father kissed the soldier 
boy awake in the morning. So was Franklin 
Hamilton kissed asleep by the wife of his heart, 
but kissed awake by the Lord of his Life and 
dwells with much smiling in the Everlasting Day. 

Bishop Robert McIntyre 

I have deep sadness in the heart at the going of 
Bishop McIntyre. I had hoped he would rally 
and be in strength again. As I saw him last, I 
see him now at the bishops' meeting with that 
strangely winsome smile lighting his face like a 
lamp. He has gone smilingly out into his Father's 
house. It is the lonely and apart man that im- 
pressed me and impresses me. How often have I 

seen him in the city streets where the throngs 

182 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

crowded, walking as in a dream. He was as lost 
as if he had been in some distant desert. The 
Scotch moors were not more lonely nor more sad 
than his spirit. I used to watch him in bishops' 
meeting and there he was listening, listening, but 
often not hearing. His spirit had gone on a walk 
out somewhere he loved — I used to think of the 
Words worthian Kne, "I wandered lonely as a 
cloud." He was ever a dreamer, a mystic, a beau- 
tiful mystic. He accused me of that, but cer- 
tainly he was a mystic spirit brooding. He would 
sit at the fire and watch the flame dance as I have 
seen him do in our own home, and be a million 
leagues removed from us and from himself. I 
wonder how he will wander through the mystery 
of light and love in his Father's house .^^ 

At the last bishops' meeting his prayer on a 
day was so tender, so tearful, so hushed in great 
calm, so near the great Christ that I was smitten 
with his holy wonder and urged out toward God 
in its heavenly rush of soul. He was dreaming 
with his God; and we were at the dream. I shall 
always recall him at that voice and at the nearness 
to the Holy One of Israel. Robert Mclntyre loved 
God. Things unseen and eternal were very sure 
to him; his Scotch nature was not hard, but had 
mist on its moors and rivers and the fall of rain 
and the burnie's wimple and then the gushes of 
sunlight that smote the heather wild with purple 
laughter. Scot he was; resolute, clean, craggy, 

and neighboring the sea. 

183 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

I was a successor to him in a pastorate, and 
there always men said, "Mclntyre was a man." 
He was. It was good to hear that of him. Patches 
of tenderness would smile out on you like a pool 
of violets upon a sunny bank. His eloquence was 
haunting. His voice had the violin effect on me 
— weird, pathetic, tearful, and ever a minstrel. 
Once on a car in a certain city a man said to me, 
"I have heard to-day one of the two great sermons 
of my life. One of the sermons was preached by 
Bishop McDowell; the one to-day was preached 
by Bishop Mclntyre." It was sweet to hear. I 
told Robert of it, and his smile shone out on me 
and he was helped in courage. We shall miss that 
voice and that tall, erect figure and that sunset 
phrase and that winsomeness of soul which one 
must know the man well to encounter at the 
full. 

I love to think on our love one for the other, 
and how love does not die but only in the Christ 
goes on a far and fairer journey. May this walker- 
in-the-throng find long spaces sown to stars in the 
heavenly land where his poet-heart may wander 
at its will, not lonely and not sad, but solitary for 
an hour to come back with the smile eternal on 
the face. He fares forth now upon the heavenly 
hills, and with him is the Comforter. 

He used to sit by the hour and look upward, 
just look upward. And now he has gone where 
he looked. 



184 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

The Story of Margaret 

"Why stay we on the earth except to grow?" 
(Browning.) 

A young woman, beautiful, vivacious, hugely 
feminine, with an alert mind, singularly brilliant in 
conversation, piquant, direct, fitted by every gift 
for social life and with not a single cloud along 
her sky, met with a trivial accident which de- 
veloped into cancer with which the girl battled 
for twelve years and was at last slain by it — that 
is a geographical outline of a recent drama in 
actual human life. 

She was unusually gifted. She had a gift of 
enjoyment which was extraordinary, a gift of 
being interested in people quite beyond the usual, 
a simplicity of delight in everyday things and 
people, a sure democracy in sentiment which had 
not in it a remotest touch of snobbery, a delight 
in people because they were people, a swiftness 
of sympathy with sobbing or joy, a penetrative 
intelligence in reading, an independence of view 
in all things literary or human, a tenacity of view 
which was sometimes belligerent but always de- 
licious, a joy in her own people which marked 
with certainty the feminine instinct, a delight in 
her own blood kinsfolk which never wavered, a 
charming womanliness that only those of her own 
household fully knew, a gift of making friends 
which is very seldom equaled, a freshness of 
intelligence which minded one of the primitive in- 

185 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

tellect, a critical gift in literature which in things 
human seldom failed of hitting the mark, a 
carelessness of established opinion whether civic, 
literary or social, a woman who delighted in color 
of fabrics and flowers, a carelessness about nature 
as such, coupled with a delight in multitudes and 
cities and travel and populations. She was not 
built on a country plan; she could not vegetate. 
She was frank as an open sky. The thoughts she 
harbored she readily expressed. She had a sense of 
humor not often equaled in women with a swiftness 
and deftness of repartee, exhilarating as a December 
wind. She was a church woman with a decisive- 
ness in ethical standards which was puritanical 
and a latitude as to form which was exceptional. 
She was not what a casual observer would have 
catalogued as a spiritual spirit. She seldom 
talked of religious matters. She was verily 
human, swift in enjoying, wide in delight, full of 
rejoicing so that unless a body were acquainted 
with her well and long he would not understand 
her depth of spiritual sagacity and intent. 

This writer has not known a more virile intel- 
ligence among women he has known; and it has 
been his fortune to know many women of rare 
gifts, and though he lived under the same roof 
with this girl for more than twenty years, he never 
tired of her talk. He called it "prattle" it was so 
engaging and overflowing and natural and saga- 
cious and witty, so that in every right view of 

brilliancy of conversation it would be necessary 

186 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

in truth to classify her as a brilliant conversa- 
tionalist. She was so loyal to her own. It was a 
part of this man's sweetest memory how her own 
owned her. She was unfailing in her fidelity to 
her heart and those who held supremacy therein, 
whether they were sister, brother, mother, or 
father. 

Her mother was unspeakably precious to her 
and held a supremacy of which she was altogether 
worthy. Those two were more sister and sister 
than mother and daughter. They were so unlike 
as to be complementary. The mother was reticent, 
the daughter voluble; and with the daughter the 
reticent mother became even volubly talkative. 
They enjoyed "talking things over" as their 
woman's phrase put it. To a man, to hear them 
doing it was like surprising a new delight. Though 
she grew to womanhood at home, it was singular 
how little she ever stayed away from her mother, 
away from whom she became homesick speedily. 
Please God, she may not be homesick for her now 
that she has gone to dwell with God. 

She was like the branch of a growing tree which 
takes the weight of bird or storm upon itself but 
unwittingly and immediately springs back to place 
the second the pressure is removed. This re- 
siliency of spirit was sublime and her affrontery 
to pain and care must be set down as deeply 
phenomenal. 

When she was a beautiful and witching girl, to 

whom love was likely to come, and when she was 

187 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

surrounded by admirers and suitors, her accident 
came; and her battle with disease and death 
began. Twenty -one times did she undergo major 
operations beside many minor ones. Long months 
of sleepless pain stabbed at her courage and vi- 
vacity, impairing neither. For weeks together 
and not infrequently, her life hung by a rotten 
thread. Weeks together she tasted no food, and 
how her life was sustained no physician could de- 
termine. Weeks of continuous nausea vainly tried 
to sap her courage. Opiates were used on her for 
all the years of her tragedy both for the operations 
manifold and to allay the tragic pain subsequent 
to them until it is safe to say that ninety men to 
the hundred would have become drug addicts. Yet 
this woman had the immense resolution to stop 
the use of the drug the very day the madding 
pain had surceased a little. She was scarcely out 
of the hospital from one operation till another 
became imperative, and so lived for years en 
route, so to say, from hospital to hospital. For 
more than a dozen years she was continuously 
under the charge of some skilled surgeon. Of all 
that company of surgeons every one was a skillful 
operator; and this story of skill is one to make a 
body proud of American surgical skill. Besides, 
these many physicians were so tender and con- 
siderate that they were counted not so much 
physicians as friends. 

Sometimes there would be a halt in the virulent 

growth, but over the household was the fear that 

188 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

never slept. Her sweet mother grew to have a 
sigh in her throat which she knew not of but her 
husband noted and grieved over. 'WTiile this girl 
sat smilingly in the presence of the encroaching 
fear, she studied how not to let her own household 
know when the disease was recurring and clamor- 
ing for another operation. Many's the time she 
would come to her father with a wild sob in her 
voice and tears streaming down both her cheeks 
and throw herself on his heart saying, "Papa, 
again. Don't tell mamma. I won't cry again. I 
am not crying for myself but for dear mother," 
and they two would weep in each other's arms 
and then once again she would go about smilingly. 
The April rain had fallen and the sunshine glowed 
again. That father has met many brave men and 
women, but calmly records (if that can be counted 
as calm which chokes him like a rushing sea) that 
such smiling, unstudied, unconscious heroism has 
scarcely met him in a lifetime spent in first-hand 
contact with men and women unless that other 
competitive heroism be the heroism of the child's 
mother. Would he could write of these things as 
he felt them during the twelve years they fairly 
assaulted his soul. In the face of "deaths many" 
she kept radiant, smiling cheer like a June day. 
Betimes love wooed her, but who was she to think 
of love whose destination was a nearby grave? 
From city to city she was taken in search of the 
cure that never came. It was the perpetual joy 

of those who loved her to be able to use every 

189 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

possible possibility of skill for her recovery. Pain 
and she were sisters. They kept perpetual vigil, 
though no stranger ever could have guessed it 
from her demeanor. She looked the picture of 
health and the day she went for her last operation 
a neighbor said to her father: "How well the 
daughter looks! She is the picture of health." 
The saddest thing her nearest ever encountered in 
the procession of sadness was when a new opera- 
tion was determined on, to hear her singing some 
funny song to give out the impression that she 
was gay when she was hiding a breaking heart. 
He who writes has heard her singing so when he 
thought he should die of the sheer heroism in- 
volved in the song. To defend her family from 
her fears and pain, grew to be the studied study 
of her life and the unconscious study of her life. 
She would play chess with her brother when she 
was looking down into her grave and would talk 
to her sister glibly about a party when herself 
was to have a tryst with death. The singing, 
joyous abundant love of life was sturdily and all 
but steadily on her. She possessed singular mas- 
tery in diverting her own thought from herself. 
When she was in the stupor of dying, her voice 
rushed to speech to say, "Who will play chess 
with brother Billy now.^^" 

Her love of being loved was beautiful and very 
pathetic. "Give me a love," was her accustomed 
phrase. Her rejoicement in the love of friends 
and family will never pass from memory. Her 

190 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

wanting to be with her own and her own with her 
was fairly oppressive, she saying to her mother 
when with steady voice she was talking to that 
weeping woman about her funeral and the pres- 
ence of her brother and sisters, "They will see me, 
won't they, mamma?" And they saw her! If she 
could not see them, she was shut in to the joy 
that beloveds would be with her and would look 
upon her silent face. And it so happened that in 
a little room belonging to the family in the old 
home town, there the silent dear heart lay and all 
her dear ones by her looking on her dear face. It 
seemed to her mother and father that she should 
have known and that she almost smiled. They 
would not have wondered if she had. 

Her power of sympathy for distress was on her 
from a child and grew with her as the years passed; 
and, of course, when her own health was broken 
she had larger thoughts for others. There haunted 
her the sense of "the incurables." She was wont 
to speak in terms of lightness which hid depths 
of sorrowful brooding, of how she some day would 
be in an old people's Home or a house for in- 
curables. She is saved from that. She is cured 
now. But the memory she would have of some 
sick folk long after she had left a city was evi- 
denced by this or that remembrancer sent from 
time to time. The ability to put herself in an- 
other's place, which is the secret of Jesus, was 
hers in a strange measure. She could enter into a 

boy's life with zest, or into a girl's life. She fairly 

191 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

plunged into what was of interest to others. It 
was very good to encounter. To the last it was so. 

"What have you been doing, and where have 
you been, and what was said, and what did they 
wear, and what was it like, and did you have a 
good time?" were the fusillade of questions which 
shot from the sick bed and the wan face which 
never lost interest in others. She will make wide 
inquiries in the land whither she has now come. 

To her friends who were many, because she had 
rare gift in making friends and had lived in many 
cities, being in a Methodist preacher's family, her 
steady cheer was like a gospel. It was a gospel. 
Her love of pretty things was girlish and pas- 
sionate, and some piece of jewelry given her or a 
bit of woman finery she specially delighted in 
she would invariably take to bed with her. Her 
parents laughed over it weepingly then, but now 
can only weep over it. On her deathbed she asked 
the nurse to bring a gown she specially delighted 
in to show a friend, and at his request she was 
vested in it at her burial. Her love for crimson 
roses was as that of Omar, only his love beati- 
fied. At the last day of her life she held a red 
rose against her cheek for hours and would not 
let it go, saying softly to her mother beside her, 
"I always loved them so." We who miss her 
hope God may have at hand a red rose garden 
for her hands to pluck from in paradise. 

As the pain-filled years came and passed, a 
haunting look of pain came to her eyes which 

192 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

was not noticeable to others but to those who 
watched her with love's solicitude was unfor- 
gettable, and in her picture came to be visible 
to anyone. She had a native untaught skill in 
painting imaginary faces of women. Copying she 
could not do, but dream faces she could picture 
interminably. Many will see her though their 
eyes are wet, out on the porch by the lake where 
she sat talking volubly to visitors and painting 
as fast as she talked; and there was celerity in 
both. 

Fourteen months before her death, owing to a 
cold taken in a severer climate than she was ac- 
customed to, and being in a weakened condition 
from a recent operation, she was attacked by a 
terribly acute case of rheumatic fever which for 
two months seemed certain to be her death and 
from which she never recovered wholly. For the 
remainder of her life her hands were distorted so 
that she could not dress herself or cut her own 
food and was unable to paint the pictures in which 
she had delight. While in the wanderings of her 
latest breath she said, "Mamma, see this picture; 
don't you think it is as pretty as I used to paint.?" 
and in her coffin, one of the things which invited 
the mourners to stay their grieving a little was the 
two poor hands with the rheumatism-stiffened 
fingers. Still she kept smilingly on through the 
year trying to massage her fingers into malle- 
ability. They are better now. 

Then the operations multiplied. Closer to- 

193 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

gether the growths came and grew with astonish- 
ing rapidity until as a last resort radium treatment 
was resorted to and to Baltimore she and her 
mother went. There she suffered things unspeak- 
able. Every skill was used by skillful practitioners, 
but the disease had gotten into her blood. Here 
she was so sick and the homing instinct came on 
her mightily. She put her emaciated arms about 
her father's neck pleading: "Papa, take me home; 
dear papa, take me home. I want to go home 
with you." And when, totally unable for the 
journey, her brave mother took her to Chicago 
so she might face homeward, and through a series 
of kindnesses from nurse, physician, railroad con- 
ductor, brakesman, porter, and friends, the poor 
child the pain-crowded journey through kept say- 
ing "O mamma, isn't it sweet to be going home, so 
sweet, O mamma, so sweet!" Dear friends met 
them at Chicago and conveyed her to Wesley 
Hospital, where all that Christian courtesy and 
skill could do were at her service; where her phy- 
sician was a dear friend, a member of her father's 
old church, and assiduous in kindness and com- 
petency, she all the while saying with a happy 
though weary voice, "O, mamma, it is so good to be 
here! I am so glad to be here." Nauseated for 
entire weeks so she could take no food, weakened 
by continuous fasting, yet smiling and courageous, 
and thinking of others — as this writer recalls all 
this he feels his cheek mantle with a blush that 

he has not been a braver man. 
^ 194 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

Sometimes in her tragic continuance of suffer- 
ing she wished not to Hve, and putting arms about 
a loved one's neck she sobbed, "I won't see you 
any* more, dear daddy," but at the normal the 
love of life and battle for it were mighty with her, 
and at the latest hour when she was drifting out 
irrevocably she told her mother how she wished 
she might stay with her one year more! The 
battle went against her, but the victory was hers. 

We prayed for her day and night and hoped for 
her. Companies of friends across the continent 
were breaking hearts for her and praying for her. 
No murmur was on her lips. Her smile sweet- 
ened and grew more placid. She could not endure 
her mother from her sight all day. She must be 
near, nearer, ever near. The last day of her life 
save one, when her mother, overwearied, had gone 
for the night, the 'phone in her room rang and to 
her delight it was her dear daughter's voice 
speaking to her saying: "Can you hear me, 
mother .f^ Isn't my voice strong .^^ I am so much 
better. The doctor has found a new wash which 
eases my throat. I knew you would sleep better 
if I told you. Good night, dear mother." 

The poison of the disease was aching through 
her blood. Her every muscle ached. Her lips 
could scarcely be opened enough to receive a 
drop of water, but she smiled, smiled! ^ 

On her last day, when she was certain she could 

not stay much longer, when the other land lay in 

plain sight of her, while her mother sat beside her 

195 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

drenched with sorrow and longing, then she lay 
and spoke like a minister at the altar. She looked 
back across her life. She made no moan. She 
whispered no complaint. She counted her mer- 
cies out loud. She spoke slowly, placidly in an 
even voice of the things on which she had brooded 
over in these long, fearsome years. She spoke of 
her family, her rearing, her friends, the solicitude 
of care which had ministered to her every want 
« through twelve suffering years. She cast no 
blame on God for her disease. Her theology in 
this regard was impeccable. She gave away her 
belongings, her trinkets and jewels, to the end 
that when she was gone the lone while, those she 
loved might have a remembrancer from her. She 
left a ring to a dear little lad, her sister's son, for 
him to wear when he was grown to be a man. 
She left messages to her friends, calling them by 
name. She named her beloveds one after one, 
saying, "Dear Sister Mabel," "Dear Brother 
Billy," "Dear Allie Gayle." 

She with insistency characteristic of her would 
not be put off until her mother promised her that 
now for twelve years having devoted herself to 
her, not to grieve overmuch but to make her life 
glad for the sake of those who remained. She 
would not take "No" but insisted until her 
mother promised; and then she smiled. She re- 
iterated, her mother must not be sad for her, for 
she would be at rest. She spoke of her love for 
what she termed frivolity, but which her friends and 

196 



SOME FRIENDS OF MINE IN PARADISE 

family counted sweet humanness, and when her 
mother's choking voice said, "God understands 
you, dear," "O yes," she said, "God will take care 
of me. I am not afraid of that." She saluted her 
mother with the oft-repeated "My lovely mother, 
my lovely mother," and was not amiss in her esti- 
mate. And when she was past speech, or seeming 
knowledge, she snuggled her mother's hand 
against her cheek. "I hear singing," she softly * 
said and repeated, "We shall meet, we shall meet; 
what is the rest of that, mother.? We shall meet." 
And when her mother sobbed holding the dear 
hand, "O my sweet daughter," the girl in sight 
of the other life comforted her mother, "Don't 
cry, mother, don't cry," and so passed out into 
the better land. 

This writer has known many people, soldiers 
and the like; but as he thinks of them he is con- 
firmed in his judgment that bravery like this is 
almost new to him and quite sublime. 

This woman died this side of thirty, and yet 
by the help of God through the chemistry of 
suffering had achieved a character which for 
brave beauty makes a mountain peak an incon- 
spicuous height. 

For a young woman to live for years in un- 
assailable calm in sight of the great hereafter, 
and in her last moments to speak of it in a level 
voice with a brain as clear as sunlight and a 
heart of settled calm like an apostle of God, 
moves him who writes as a mighty flood, and he 

197 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

greatly thanks God, remembering the many mer- 
cies of a happy life, for being privileged to live so 
many years with this brave, beautiful, and gleeful 
spirit who with scant talk of religious things lived 
a life so bright, unselfish, beautiful, and brave; 
and he trusts in God that all the coming years 
he may walk with a braver step, with more sunny 
courage, with larger hope, with more unselfishness 
of thought and behavior until he sees the child in 
glory. 

Said a maid to a beloved lady who was sob- 
bing over the brave death of this dear girl, the 
woman herself wearing widow's weeds for a noble 
husband lately gone to God, "Miss Margaret has 
seen Mr. Barnhart before now." 

If character be the largest growth beneath 
these rising and setting stars, if at our last high 
reach it is character we attain unto, then this girl 
has achieved what kings have died unknowing. 
If staying on the earth, as Browning thought, is 
but to grow, then has this sweet woman used 
earth's saps well up and had scant need of longer 
staying. 

O Hope of Christ, we bless thee with our broken 
hearts that if it were not so thou wouldst have 
told us. 



198 



XIV 
CARELESS CREEK 

Careless Creek is the name of a wandering, 
noisy water in wide Montana. Who christened it 
nobody knows; more's the pity. Who did name 
it merits a plaudit. He saw things and said things. 
That is poetry. 

The name romps into a body's heart, plumps 
into the center of it like a frog into a pond when 
somebody comes too near him. Kerplunk he goes. 
So this name does. 

The first time I heard this name I laughed out 
loud in sheer delight. It hit my spot. Everybody 
has or should have a careless spot in him some- 
where — some giggling point where there is no joke, 
something done natively like a pine bough sway- 
ing in the wind — some unpremeditated activity of 
mind or mood or body like a baby's cooing when 
it lies by itself just wakened from sleep. When I 
heard the name "Careless Creek" my careless spot 
sang out "Goody!" like a robin red-breast in the 
spring. "Careless Creek!" How bewitching! 
There it giggled along noisly among the roots of 
pines or under the roots of pines or under wind- 
tossed branches of shadow, dashing out into the 
sunlight, growing placid in pools of quiet, whisper- 
ing away in a current all speed and laughter where 

199 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

the trout takes his jump Hke a miniature finned 
tiger, out into a wide ripple where it has scarcely 
water enough to go around, then gathers into a pool 
big enough for wild ducks to frequent in spring or 
fall migrations and where the seeded grasses clus- 
ter and hang over as a solicitation to bird hunger, 
then under a bank where at noon it is dark, then 
becomes solemn as a little girl at church holding 
a hymn book, or a little boy trying to fool his 
teacher, then out into the sunlight where a mea- 
dow loves the sunlight and bathes in the luster of 
noon, where the brook crimsons to the advent of 
sunup and blushes to the sunset of the day — then 
round and round itself like a kitten trying to catch 
its tail, and then into the shag of wood shadow 
again but with much laughter, as if playing hide- 
and-seek with itself and then adventuring! That 
is Careless Creek. 

This creek is a water greatly to be desired by 
all who are wise in the things of the Spirit. The 
prank players are always wise. The fool plays no 
pranks. "Be quiet," said a wise man in the midst 
of prank-playing, "there comes a fool." Wherever 
Careless Creek is we must haunt it. By good 
fortune it lies not far from anybody's house. 
Every little water is careless. The great streams 
are grown laborious, thoughtful, prankless. That 
is their sorrow. They have lost their sprightliness 
and have grown somber like an old cat. What a 
pity a cat cannot stay kittenish! That would be 

cat perfection. A kitten is one of the funniest 

200 



CARELESS CREEK 

things of God's invention. A rheumatic would 
grow frisky watching kittens play. They are all 
improvisers. They play no tune composed be- 
forehand. So kings' fools once did. They now 
leave it to kings. A tired big body can lie on the 
floor by the hour watching the tom-foolery of 
little kittens and be greatly rested by it and be 
much the better for it. Every house ought to 
have a kitten in it, but never a cat. A cat has 
forgotten youth, which is a sin, a cardinal sin. A 
cat has settled down into complacency and selfish 
ease, but is careless no more. He is sober as a 
mummy. 

Careless Creek loiters if it feels like it, hurries 
if it wants to, and has no call to arrive. What 
luxury that is! — the unpremeditated life. What 
fun it is to start nowhere and not arrive. The 
pest of travel is that you are starting somewhere 
and fussy until you arrive, and more fussy when 
you arrive. It is all a schedule. You feel like a 
timecard. You are dated up like an almanac and 
there is no spontaneity in an almanac any more 
than in a timecard. 

There is a charm in the worn footpath and like- 
wise a charm in the unattempted way. The way 
across lots where the marsh catches you by the 
ankles and you kershlosh in water to your knees 
or beyond them, where the tussocks of grass play 
tickle with you and the grasshopper flicks out of 
your way and a swamp orchid may shine up at 
you like an unlooked-for smile, or a blue flower 

201 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

may bloom in some hollow made by a trespassing 
cattle foot — all is new and not ready-made. 

We are fettered by the expected. Things are 
where things were and how they are. Some 
sweetness lies past doubt in the familiar ways: 
the accustomed place, the chair, the picture — 
where it has hung these years, the books on the 
shelf where you could find them in the dark. But 
we grow to be prisoners of this settled order. We 
get old-maidish. We are cross-grained at change 
and scoldy at improvisation. Things must be in 
place like a corpse. Only the dead are absolutely 
reliable, and when we think of it we wish they 
were living and a bit uncertainish. I wish the 
grave on the hill might be emptied and the hoy- 
den who lies there so staidly might invade the 
room and the hearth and our whole world with 
cyclonic laughter and spontaneous jest and rush 
of spirits, like a sudden wind coming from the 
hills. Ah me, that would be a holiday ! 

If some staid soul says this essay is a plea for 
topsy-turvydom and things out of place, like a 
boy's room, I cannot quite deny the charge, al- 
though I do not quite agree either. In a word, I 
am careless about it although we have had a boy's 
room topsy-turvy till a whirlwind could have felt 
perfectly at home there, and it has been full of 
boys of various dimensions and conditions and 
freckles, and now the room is quiet all the while 
and quiet enough for an invalid to fall asleep in, 

but my heart aches for the rubbish of the boy and 

202 



CARELESS CREEK 

his belongings and his boy friends, all which will 
never come again. They are gone as if the sea 
had taken them away on its bosom: they will 
return no more. The tides of the sea sometimes 
bring back what they bear out to sea, but the 
tides of the years bring nothing back save mem- 
ories. In the room, there is his picture, his 
freckled face with his head at a stiff but very 
boylike angle. The photographer frightened him 
and diverted him from his natural mien and man- 
ner. He is as I have seen him across the table sol- 
emnly pinching his sister, and when prayers were 
in process! Laddie, laddie, O laddie, come back, 
come back and litter up the room. And there is 
no answer. The room is not touseled as his hair 
was, now. The room is not impassable as a Fourth 
of July and filled with the boom of cannon which 
the boy or the other boys had made in a wrestling 
match in which some of them or all of them ker- 
flumixed on the floor. All is quiet: and but that I 
am a man I would weep out loud over it. 

Life as it ages tends to lose carelessness and 
variety and the unintended action and unpre- 
meditated spontaneity. We are like known seas, 
all charted, and become navigable truly, but ad- 
ventureless. We never surprise ourselves. We 
arrive on schedule, that is all. If somebody is 
waiting for us, we are prompt, that is all. No- 
body wonders at us nor do we wonder at ourselves. 
O the pity of it! The enthusiasm of youth as I 

listen to its funny gabble of which I never tire is 

203 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

that though it is mainly meanness, by wordy, filled 
with the "don't-tell-mes" and "who'd-have- 
thoiight-its," it still has the glow of the uninten- 
tional. You might be narrow and say "No 
thought in it," but that would be uncharitable, 
since all of us did as those do; nor would it be 
wise, for it has what thoughtfulness might not 
have — the spring of a branch when the bird 
alights or flits from it, the fine suavity of youth, 
the ruddy laugh, the chime of laughter, sweeter 
than skilled music. It is absolutely impossible to 
forecast what youth will do or say or think. 
Youth arrives, is all you can say. It bubbles up 
like a spring of laughing water. Nothing is more 
stale and unprofitable and insipid than a stereo- 
typed letter taken from a letter- writer — "Mr. 
Blank requests the honor of Miss Blank's" — ^but 
when they run for a street car there will be noth- 
ing stereotyped. Even a falling down will be 
unpremeditated . 

The ruts wear into the soul, and the worst of it 
is that we do not know or we may not know it. 
Care takes possession of our unconsciousness. We 
pass from day to day into the rut in the road and 
cannot turn out unless driven to it by the oncomer 
who insists on his part of the road. Things grow 
eventless rather than eventful. We are unwearied 
by routine which is a worse thing than being 
wearied by routine. When we are wearied by 
routine our wings speak. When unwearied by 

routine our feet are our captains. We must not 

204 



CARELESS CREEK 

be dull like horses that walk a treadmill. Sur- 
prise must play peek-a-boo with us at frequent 
corners of the streets. "Who will be along the 
path this day .f^" is a wise monologue of each pas- 
senger, which keeps him alert, silent, inloquacious, 
but expectant. 

Yes, Careless Creek is a stream the soul must 
hie to. It lies so near, sings so sweetly, wanders 
so fearlessly — as fearless as a bird in the dark. I 
can hear the happy call of its voices in the midst 
of many cares: and the music, I must say, is en- 
chanting. Who wants that wandering water 
wants it for always. He would not live there — 
that is another matter. He would live with care 
— that is life's business, but not all life's business. 
Part of life's business is to be unbusinesslike. It 
is not worth while to become the pigeonholes 
which make up an office desk. That is as dreary 
as the mud flats when the tide is out. Mud flats 
have the happy encroachment of the sea, blue, 
blithe, radiant. Life must not be more a mud 
flat than the ocean's shore. The preacher who 
forgot the wedding at which he was to officiate 
had it to his praise that he could forget business. 
And that preacher who forgot to purchase a mar- 
riage license for his own wedding must be ac- 
quitted of dreary monotony of activity. 

It is good to let yourself stroll. Following a 
body's feet is not always a sign of empty-headed- 
ness. It may well now and then be a sign of a 
wisdom such as the sand pipers and curlews are 

205 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

possessors of. Sometimes we go to school, down- 
town, to the railroad station, to bed. These are 
customary harbors where we cast customary 
anchor. Then there are blessed sometimes when 
we just go. We are destinationless as whippoor- 
wills at song in the night. I am often allured of 
going somewhere. I must do that so contin- 
uously. I love it. It is how my life maintains its 
part in this great brown world which has been 
very, very kind to me. I rail not at it. I have 
no grumpiness about it. I do not consider myself 
abused in that my day's work must be done man- 
fully; rather, I am glad of the world's confidence 
in me, and that it has reliance in me and thinks 
that I am necessary is a joy far past the telling. 
Nevertheless, I do grow tired going somewhere al- 
ways. I want sometimes to go nowhere in par- 
ticular. I want to gad about. I want to loiter or 
hasten as the whim is. I want to be scheduleless 
for a day. Let me rise with the lark or the goose 
as seemeth best. I have been bidden often to rise 
with the lark. No one has bidden me to rise with 
the goose, wherefore that befits Careless Creek; 
and I wot that the goose is a water-fowl as the 
lark is not. Wherefore is the goose in harmony 
with this water. Even carelessness has its logic 
if you press it not too far. 

I am wondering if some part of that incalculable 
charm which old Sam Johnson did exercise, has 
exercised, does exercise over men's spirits, is not 

to be accounted for in part by his sturdy assertion 

206 



CARELESS CREEK 

of leisure, by his going out and staying out as if a 
world of literary matters did not bark at him like 
a kennel of hounds. He refused to be fettered 
whether in an inn or a library. He wanted out 
and away. Townsman was he, but a wandering, 
vagabond townsman. I hear him striking out, 
sturdily going nowhere. He was like a wind on a 
moor. I believe it of him that he was an invet- 
erate freedom of spirit flight, boisterous, even 
tempestuous, but out to meet the adventures of 
the road. Likewise I think that some of that 
eternal freshness of Jack Falstaff lay in that he 
was outward bound. He was a traveler. His 
ease was at his inn. He had no home. The high- 
way was his garden where he dug and hoed. 
Something you cannot prophesy is in him. Not 
his vast jest is the full quiver of his wonder that 
suffices to give him a laughing immortality. His 
vagabondness is part of his mystery and merit. 
Gentlemen of the road — that is the witchery of 
that otherwise rather senseless performance. The 
wandering water gets into the secret places all 
across the spiritual landscape. Fishermen go 
where they do not have to go. They come in when 
they are ready, and nothing is ready made. They 
are not making a scientific investigation nor prepar- 
ing for a piscatorial thesis. They are loafing, joy- 
ously taking long, unmeaning jaunts which weary 
but do not tire. They have forgotten what they 
work at for a living. Their feet go and they follow 

their feet or the streams run and they follow the 

207 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

running. Their ears are filled with the laughter of 
wings they do not see. Every whisper of swaying 
branches, every slosh of the grayling in the stream 
or trout in the brook whispers, "Be careless; this 
is Careless Creek." 

Every well-informed soul finds himself walking 
as if he were walking in his dreams and suddenly 
asking nobody in particular — just interrogating 
the atmosphere — "Is this the road to Careless 
Creek.?" 

"No such thing around here," sweatily answers 
the business man. 

And the happy somnambulist replies, wandering 
on: "I think it must be near here. I am certain I 
smell the wood smells and its damp perfumes and 
catch the tang of its swaying willows." And a 
little farther on he smiles, "I hear its waterfalls 
calling me." 

The staid rivers — the Nile, the Euphrates, the 
Jordan, the Ganges, the Tiber, the Thames, the 
Hudson, the Mississippi — are not the streams 
beckoning the pilgrims to Careless Creek. These 
are all crowded like a crowded street. They sin 
against privacy and loitering. There you must 
step lively and avoid the passing car, whereas out 
on Careless Creek everybody walks. There are no 
autos or carriages or railways. It is a country 
haunted by silence and sibilant song. Nobody 
hurries: nobody crowds: nobody asks whence you 
come nor whither go you. People do not come 
to Careless Creek, they just drift in, they arrive 

208 



CARELESS CREEK 

like bluebirds in the spring, just as friends do not 
call, but drop in. When the season arrives for 
my annual journey to Careless Creek next, I shall 
happen in along its banks and happen to be sitting 
with bare feet hanging in the water and feeling 
foolishly, sagely happy, and when I am sitting as I 
love to sit, chancing to lift up my eyes, I shall see 
across the stream, with bare feet kicking in the 
waters and the fish line wandering down with the 
current, a friend I love beyond words to frame it, 
and I shall not be surprised to see him though a 
year has happened since last we met, but I smile 
and he will smile, and we will say softly, so as 
not to tell the fish we are there waiting for them, 
how sweet the light is on the water, and how lovely 
the shadowed grasses in the stream, and how the 
sky is blue beyond anything we ever knew, and 
the water more tenderly engaging than we ever 
found it! and that we are both hungry as we 
never had been before, and we wonder what the 
sweet housekeeper at our house will have for din- 
ner. We are never surprised at Careless Creek — 
only just glad and expectant. We do not exclaim; 
we just gratefully and gleefully receive and say 
grace. 

Now as I come to recall the people I have met, 
it occurs to me that the lack of fascination in many 
I have known who were fairly obese in knowledge 
and travel and relevant information was that they 
have never heard of Careless Creek. They were 

encyclopaedic if you needed knowledge, but they 

20d 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

had no irrelevant information. All they knew 
was classified as a botanical specimen. The per- 
sons who have proven pure fascination to my 
spirit, I now recall, were those who were rich in 
asides and whose words were most fragrant when 
saying nothing much. They have been so many 
places where they have had no call to go. They 
might not have been at the tourist points, but at 
points of no tourists they were frequent visitors. 
Such women and men are delicious, like cherries 
eaten from the trees. To eat cherries from a box 
bought at the grocery store is pretty tame busi- 
ness, whereas to climb a cherry tree and quarrel 
with the blackbirds and robins and catbirds for 
your cherry is as much fun as being a butterfly. 

Many people are informed, well-read, useful, trav- 
eled, yet are remote from the power of casting a spell 
over your spirit. They do not lure you, do not hold 
the fairy wand which, when you are touched by 
it, you become dweller in Oberon's Land. They 
do not glare, neither do they glow. It is worth 
much to have a firefly glow, and so be lamplight 
in yourself, for any twilight which could omit the 
starlight and not be in the dark. Not light 
enough to read by, but light enough to dream by 
and keep alive the happy sense of luminosities 
not set down in scientific treatises. "The Be- 
loved Vagabond" of William Locke had that on 
him, or I miss my guess. Those things about 
him which we would forget or omit were ex- 
traneous. They could be wiped off or washed off; 

210 



CARELESS CREEK 

those things which we wish never to forget are 
intrinsic hke the light of suns. Many great men 
have no lure: while many lesser men have a lure 
like the gloaming when the robin redbreast calls 
good night. 

Is it not this absence of lure of Careless Creek 
which is the tiny rift in the lute which, if it does 
not destroy, does tarnish their music? 

The quality which resides in the vesper sparrow, 
the haunting, is that it.? Where is the vesper 
sparrow .f^ Well asked, but not readily answered. 
That bird of longing is sequestered, is out along 
Careless Creek somewhere. We shall encounter 
nothing other^ than the voice of him and that 
suffices. Many singers would sound better if 
they were invisible. In "Morte d' Arthur" 
it is descriptively said of Sir Bedevere that he 
was "No more than a voice in the white winter 
of his age." "No more than a voice" — my 
Lord Laureate, thou hast fastened a fine phrase 
upon our dreaming. Much food for imagination 
is here. Just to be a voice, a hid voice, an un- 
localized voice, a cuckoo call along the fringes of 
the spring — that is quite enough. That satisfies 
as presences and noisy presences do not. 

And Tennyson himself — was that a voice? "No 
more than a voice," howbeit not in the white 
winter of his age alone only, but all his life. He 
was just over the hill in a thicket from you. He 
was elusive; and this elusive quality has about it 

unthinkable poetries. Tennyson was much given 

211 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

to wandering out by Careless Creek ofttimes when 
it swam like a sea wave out into the sea. 

Frequenters of Careless Creek are not citizens 
with a crick in the back, but with a cricket on 
their hearth. That is quite another matter. A 
cricket in the heart is to have a hearth and warmth 
and a song — a song of gladness, and over little, a 
spirit of thanksgiving over things many might 
consider no sufficient theme for gratitude. They 
rejoice over minor matters. They find flavor in 
the shavings of their own work bench, and, tast- 
ing their own sweat of labor, think it honey from 
white clover hives. They have a tang. They are 
like gorse burning yellow against the glow of 
heather. 

This Careless Creek is a marvelous water. The 
Tweed and the Dove and the Bonnie Doon are 
lovely waters. I love their songs. But commend 
me to Careless Creek. It is a mystic water. It 
companies with dreams. It flows so dreamily, so 
dreamfully, so fitfully, so fearlessly, so witlessly, so 
wanderingly. It goes no man knows whither. 
We never ask into what stream it flows. That 
would pluck the shadow from its mystery. Let it 
flow, let it flow, is enough for us who frequent 
this stream. So it flows, we rest content. Its 
source and its quest are alike inconsequential. 
It is. That is our laughter. It shines across this 
meadow and gives back star for star by night. It 
hushes its voices in the daylight and lifts its 
voices in the starlight. So the frogs do in the 

212 



CARELESS CREEK 

spring time streams. It grows bold in the dark, 
in the beautiful dark. It hath its rifts of silence 
and then its rush of melody. Only to lovers of 
the fitful stream, silence is music and music is 
silence. 

This is a magic water. If you wander there life 
grows young. And years slip away from the 
shoulders like a mantle when your tired feet press 
the yielding sward of this unaccustomed stream. 
Fret blows away like dust when the wind hurries, 
care fades away and forgets where it was laid. 
Hapless fear forgets why if was afraid, tears often 
wonder why they were upon the cheek and tired 
feet run barefoot along the soft grasses that edge 
the water or go splashing across the shallows. The 
laughter which had gone silent (unwittingly) for 
weeks, now clamors like bugles. This is Careless 
Creek. 

On autumn days when the woods were just 
past their superlative splendor and the air was 
crisp as celery and when a wind-shield was not 
an impertinence, a sweet friend of ours who loves 
Careless Creek and all its tributaries, took some 
one I love and me and some one he loved as him- 
self and one other, a man of much music and soul, 
and we together went wandering wanderingly out 
into the Pocanoes. The way led always by the 
waters. We passed over bridges beautiful and 
moss-grown with their arches and loveliness and 
watched where the lichens grew green, but always 

along the stream over it, by it, not from it, where 

213 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

we saw hundreds of visions of loveliness to dawdle 
over in memory and fondle like the hand of one 
you greatly love, still crossing and re-crossing 
and re-re-crossing the same stream and stopping 
beside and going down and splashing the hands 
in the laving waters; and all the streams were 
Careless Creeks. They were just jubilant. Much 
as I have wandered in the lovely hills, I have 
never encountered such abundance of lovely and 
laughing and singing streams as in the Pocanoes; 
and I shall always cherish that landscape in my 
memory as the Land of Careless Creeks. Never 
any of these waters very wide nor very deep, but 
wide enough for loveliness and deep enough for 
dreams and swift enough for music and filled full 
with little warbling, bubbling rivulets which came 
together with a rush and many eddys and much 
foaming and fantastic delight that made my 
heart glad as running water; and this sweet friend 
loving it all, knowing about it, frequenting it for 
many years, never forgetting it, hieing back to it 
by spring, by summer, by icy winter, by gaudy fall, 
and loving it mostly in blossoming spring when 
it loitered and saw the rhododendrons in their 
wild luxury of blossoming. And yet the streams 
are always new to him as he had never seen them 
before. So is Careless Creek ever unfamiliar 
water. Here careless men grow prayerful. Prayer 
comes handy and natural at Careless Creek. It- 
self is praise and ministers to devotion. Prayer is 
never out of place when the grass leans down to 

214 



CARELESS CREEK 

kiss the stream. The streams are not more care- 
less than we and all our journey was laughter set 
with song. 

On the banks of Careless Creek the comers 
sprawl on their backs and watch the clouds drift- 
ing across the far-off blue or through the swaying 
branches of the trees survey the patches of the 
blue and the wind washes from the summer land 
washing across the face and bathe it in a calm 
like the winds of the starry night. Leaves shiver 
and whisper like lovers. Willows beckon with 
their deep shadows. The birds sing till 'tis noon 
and then hush in fatigue of music. The far eagle 
soars or the catbird calls as the brook recites a 
sonnet to the sun. Fishermen sit silently as if 
rooted in the bank or rise right lustily as having 
caught something, and each chaffs each as catch- 
ing nothing, and women who came to see that 
their husbands do not drown while adventuring 
in piscatorial art sit and knit in the shade and 
smile with that sweet content which comes only 
from a woman's heart at rest, or little children 
wade in the water bare-legged and shouting, or a 
rowboat or canoe makes its way with laughing 
delight. Careless Creek admits of all comers with 
their sport. This is the land and this the water 
along the lap of the stream and the voice of the 
trembling falls and the dip of the oar or the laugh 
of the waters on the boat prow when the wind has 
forgotten to loiter. The minnows flash through 

crystal waves: women sing not knowing that they 

215 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

sing; men are piscatorially silent or roisteringly 
gleeful: and life is come back to boyhood. Men 
forget they are gray and have reputations estab- 
lished. Careless Creek has no LL.D. or Judge. 
Every man here is "Bill" or "Jim" and nobody 
wears gloves or owns a complexion. Everybody 
is as much a thing of the sky as the birds and 
the clouds; and laughter comes as readily to the 
lips and eyes as voices to falling water. 

It is a happy water, this Careless Creek. No 
one can prophesy just where it runs; it is to be 
happened onto. It is not set down sagely on 
the road maps. We happen on it and then a 
beatitude. If anyone wants to say so, it is a 
waterway of the heart. It runs everywhere for 
such as know. It runs nowhere for such as do 
not know. Not to be found by any discoverer 
who goes equipped for the adventure, but to be 
loitered on by any who will venture forth quest- 
less. It is a sweet land in winter. I have stum- 
bled along its banks of greenery and by its shad- 
ows of peace with a ripple on its water as if a 
swallow had touched it with its wing, when winter 
was tempestuous and the cold was biting. And I 
heard no wind whining at the window-sill nor at 
the chimney, but I heard the lapping of the water 
on my boat prow as I lay nor asleep nor awake, 
only wandering out with my spirit. 

To loiter in spirit, with the wind, to drift like 
an October leaf, falling silently through Indian 
Summer skies. To forget, to feel the tug of dear 

216 



CARELESS CREEK 

hands which on silent breasts are folded years, 
years ago, to not weep at their memory, only 
smile as having them once more, not missing them, 
just having them — all this on Careless Creek. For 
Careless Creek is ever peopled with our beloved. 
The little child, your son, your daughter, your 
sweet friend greatly beloved, immeasurably missed, 
the swish of a woman's garment which was sweet to 
the hearing of the heart as the swish of the stream 
and more sweet, the boy's call, loud as a bugle, 
"Daddy, I caught one," and the girl's laughter, 
O that laughter, saying, "I good girl." O Care- 
less Creek, you are so populous to my heart! 

When I think of this as a land of solitude I do 
belie my knowledge. Thou art the peopled land 
— peopled with the things of life which are dear- 
est, quite dearest. Nobody ever moves out of 
Careless Land. Everybody moves in and there is 
no mover out; no house to let. No tent made of 
tree branches ever knows a withering leaf or a 
departed fragrance. We need not talk in that 
quiet land where voices soften so that starlight 
can be heard while all those loud voices chime at 
lusty chorus. The picnics are not in the past, but 
in the ever-enduring present. There is no past on 
the bank or bosom of Careless Creek. We all stay 
always. It really is the only land of perpetual 
habitancy. Not that we are all young there. God 
forbid. We want no land like that here, where 
sunsets conclude the sunrisings. Gray hair is 
here. The quality of wonder in this magic land 

217 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

on these magic banks by these magic waters is 
that age stays as it was. The old stay old: the 
young stay young; the noontide folks stay at their 
hour. As we appeared when first we set vagrant 
foot by this vagrant water, so we abide. We are 
a delectable company. No erasures will occur in 
our list of loitering inhabitants. They come to 
stay. These be the real abiders. "Now abideth," 
saith the sweet Scripture, "faith, hope, love, and 
the greatest of these is love." These be the in- 
habitants of Careless Land — the dreamers beside 
careless waters. 

They wander and wonder, wonder and wander. 
Careless Creek is always new — old, old — new. 
They wonder not less at its accustomed love- 
liness, because it is accustomed, but rather 
more, for the wonder is most wonderful that the 
wonder stays unstaled by much acquaintance. It 
is the land of love, and we may explain it so. 
Love's wonder is at its latest hour most to be 
wondered at. Love lasts so. Love lives so. Love 
is sure immortality. It is said, I know not how 
truly, that such as love Careless Creek and wan- 
der down it far enough, whether on foot or on 
shores or in rowboat along the waters, find far 
down not so much a widening water as a change 
of landscape. One who is known as the Living 
Water, whose company is greatly coveted by loi- 
terers on this stream, and in whose company they 
find vast solace unacclimated to care and as they 
come returning to the land they mainly spend 

218 



CARELESS CREEK 

their time and stay beside the trancing water un- 
buffeted, unaccHmated of care and are called the 
Redeemed by Him whose this land is and the 
stream and all the flowers perfumed like the 
breath of God. 

And almost anywhere I have seen a signboard 
dusty, sunburned, weather-worn, on which was 
written in a mystic hand, "The Road to Careless 
Creek," but curiously no finger was on the sign 
and no directions given. Clearly, we shall need 
to chance on with that mystic water which 
meanders through the starlit, dawnlit land of 
dreams. 

I hear it purling; and mine eyes catch the sheen 
of it among the osiers not far off, and I hear like 
the droon of August, "Come, I am Careless Creek; 
here I am, here." "But where-f^" then Hke re- 
ceding melody, "Near — I, Careless Creek." 

"O Careless Creek, O Careless Creek;" and very 
far away like an echo rather than a voice. "Here." 
"Here" (and much suppressed laughter), "here I 
am. Careless Creek!" 



219 



XV 
CHURCH SPIRES 

A CHURCH spire is the most spiritual thing man 
has contrived. It is, therefore, the most poetical; 
for things spiritual are the highest form of poetry. 
Greek temples had no spires. Spires came with 
Christ. The irresistible poetry of him ran along 
the veins of men like sunlight until when they 
came to build a place of worship out in the sun- 
light, far from the catacombs, unconsciously they 
flung their architecture into aspiration. A spire- 
less church is an eyeless structure, having lost 
the essential spirit of what it is. Those churches 
which are built like a library building, or a court 
of justice, or an opera house have lost the beat of 
the heart of ecclesiastical architecture. Men 
should not be tolerated as church architects who 
do not have in their own hearts the secret of God 
and the distillation through their plans of the 
mood of the gospel. This is a cardinal sin of 
contemporaneous church architecture. It has been 
secularized. In the name of something new they 
have imposed on the untutored in these fine spirit- 
ual atmospheres the grim spirit of utility that 
leads to the forgetting of God. 

A church is the only thing of its sort on this 

220 



CHURCH SPIRES 

earth. There are no kinsfolk to churches. They 
belong to the immortality of man, while all things 
substellar belong to the temporality of man. They 
die as man was thought to die before The Death- 
less came and wrought havoc with death. In the 
passion for utility, for modernity forsooth, for 
social rooms and serving rooms and the most 
modern Sunday school appliances, we have been 
led far and away from the sublimity which a 
church really is, and must remain if so be it shall 
retain its shining hold upon the life of the world. 
Utilitarian church architecture forgets central 
things — not matters of minutiae, but a heart thing. 
A church is a reminder of man and a reminder of 
God and a reminder of both of them in the same 
breath; not man one time and God another time, 
but to think of both simultaneously and always so, 
as we think of summer and greenery, as we think 
of motherhood and tenderness, as we think of 
darkness and dew. As far as a church building 
can be seen it should remind him who sees it of 
his God. 

Wherever a spire springs skyward the observer 
knows a church is set. The spire is a finger point- 
ing to our rendezvous of eternity. Our homeland 
is the sky, where dwells the Master of Eternity 
at whose behest we mortals make our quest into 
the infinite. If in a spirit of materialistic fault- 
finding some one should call this other-worldliness, 
we do not argue, but rejoice. We know that the 
church is built on the ground, but is not from the 

221 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

ground. It is from the skies and to the skies. It 
climbs skyward because thence it came and thither 
it aspires. Like a man, the church sets foot upon 
the ground, but walks out into the sky. He walks 
the ground; he inhales the sky. Man takes to 
the sky like the mountains and the birds. Those 
who think of him as a terrene thing lack grasp of 
his personality and immensity — both of his soul 
and his body. Man is not "of the earth, earthy," 
in the way users of that phrase often intend it. 
Man has a spire to his soul. When strange 
Thoreau said, "Time is the stream I go fishing 
in" — what did that curious recluse stumble to- 
ward save that man was larger than time and 
more lasting, and could use it as an appanage of 
his soul? And quite certainly time is larger than 
earth. The roots of life are in the earth like the 
roots of pines, and — like the pines too — life crests 
in the sky against the dayspring and the star-drip 
and the soothing voices of the wandering winds. 
We must compute man's entirety. He is cubic. 
Height is his third and sublime dimension and is 
least negligible of all his proportions. 

A Christian church symbolizes man in this im- 
mense entirety. A church house is a parable of 
man, likewise a parable of God. The homely 
holding to the ground, the glorious holding with 
the sky — this is man. Earth is a shifting sand- 
bar on the wild ways of the sea. The sky is the 
ageless durability. On it is no hint of age or 
withering. Young as that far-off first morning 

222 



CHURCH SPIRES 

when the sky first arched blue, so the sky abides. 
The shifting years have lumbered along under its 
wide expanse, but have left no fleck of dust from 
their worn sandals along its fair highways. There 
it towers, domed in immitigable majesty, fair as the 
blue flower which somewhere God grows to wear 
above his heart, and new — always new — and misty 
with mystery and mercy. Mountains lessen in 
height, and the valleys are slowly wasting into 
the sea, while no wash of rain nor pressure of years 
diminishes the stature of the sky. The sky is to 
the world what the soul is to the body, Man 
builds skyscrapers for business, but does not even- 
tuate them in a spire. Their utility is of the earth, 
worthy, unambiguous. It traffics in time: man 
traffics in eternity. There lies the difference; and 
it is an immeasurable difference and utterly sub- 
lime, and holds all of man as it holds all for man. 
It is the mute oratory of the soul. There should 
be no hesitation in being able to discover what a 
church is not — as there should be no hesitation in 
being able to discover what a church is. It is 
not a refectory nor a debating chamber — though 
it has place and room for both. Its supremacy 
and primacy should speak unambiguous as a day- 
dawn. I know railroad stations with noble cam- 
paniles, but never one with a spire. Utility knows 
its limitations and has an innate modesty which 
we do well to fathom. The early men of prayer 
and faith and love who built cathedrals built 
them cruciform, after the instrument on which 

223 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

the Savior died. That was the ground plan. 
Then rose the roof, with vast vault like an imma- 
ture sky, and that, in turn, leaped Godward as 
the blue into which the same Savior leaped on 
wings of light on that far-away and yet near-at- 
hand day when he swept up into glory behind the 
glory where we shall some good day abide with 
him. The spire points to this acclivity as to mutely 
admonish, "Thither haste ye." 

Nothing in beautiful England is so engaging 
and captivating as the sight of church tower and 
spire before you behold aught else in the approach- 
ing city. All else a city possesses shrivels in love- 
liness as compared with the severe and holy con- 
trol a cathedral takes, as by divine right, of the 
city where it builds its walls against the sky. I 
cannot speak the effect these cathedral bulks 
have on my spirit, but all about is made holy 
ground, and all the sky and twilight or noon seem 
to be taken in hand as by the angel of the Lord. 
And the same is true of the hamlet or country- 
side where through the greenery the village church 
tower stands, sentinel of God, to keep safe through 
the night to dawn the "little town of Bethlehem," 
where it resides and presides. It haunts a body, 
soul and sight, as nothing else I encounter in all 
England has power to do. Not all England's his- 
tory and storied ways can crowd the soul with 
wonder and dream like the church. The cathe- 
dral in Stratford -on- A von lords it over the world 
of quiet water and sloping downs and storied 

224 



CHURCH SPIRES 

Kenilworth and bastioned Warwick Castle so that 
— aside from the crystal genius who once was 
there and now is everywhere — the cathedral where 
his dust is stayed mounts on high to say that 
spirit cannot dim nor die. 

Approaching the cathedral cities of England is 
a royal visitation. What kings have been there 
does not invade with its trivial impertinence. 
That the Spirit of God has been there of old and 
resides is the kingly feature that grips the hands 
of the soul; and man has still a Friend where God 
resides. A cathedral comes across the spirit like 
day dawn across the hills. One yearns for the 
apocalypse of those cathedral towers and spires 
growing high and holy in the foreground as, in 
spirit or body, or both, approach is made to those 
old homes of prayer, where what may be said in a 
half dream is that "here prayer was wont to be 
made." We do not, with hesitant step and word, 
consider that here men are wont to die and from 
these holy altars men are wont to be buried. What 
we do get impression of is that here men and 
women take their boat to the far shore where 
deathless morning waits to shine across the sky 
with eventual glory. It is the cathedral we come 
to see, and it is the cathedral we do see ere we 
see the community where it is built. The inspira- 
tion of this bit of ground that will not be satisfied 
until it invades the high places of the sky meets 
us across approaching fens or river meadows where 
the waters meet. It is a spiritual ecstasy to make 

225 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

this encounter, and all other recollections are unfit 
intruders. God is in that place. 

Consider these cathedrals of England, how they 
make their climb heavenward. In this catalogue 
is given the main impression one gets from the 
approach. It can be modified by another direc- 
tion of approach, but this gets at the high fact 
that all of these houses of God and man are 
aspiration-bound, and build them into the heavens 
whose prophets they all are : Canterbury has three 
main towers, each capped at each corner with 
spires. York has one vast, unshakable tower and 
another lesser tower capped with spires — though 
the lesser tower is vast in itself, but, related, is 
less majestic. Oxford Cathedral's main feature 
seen afar is its spire. Exeter has tower capped 
with spires accompanied with many lesser spires. 
Salisbury has lordly spire. Bristol has tower with 
spires. Gloucester has tower capped with spires. 
Hereford has two spires and tower; Saint Paul's, 
a vast dome and spire; Westminster Abbey has 
double, exulting, haunting towers; Truro has three 
spires. 

What thrills the heart of a traveler nearing 
Canterbury is the proud uplift of its towers, 
springing not only far above the city roofs, but 
far above its own roof, and the four corners of the 
towers capped with spires. 

I doubt if anything man has built can exceed 
the dignity and impressiveness of Durham Cathe- 
dral as seen from Framwell Gate bridge. The 

226 



CHURCH SPIRES 

cathedral seems climbing the hill with sturdy, 
fearless feet, the immense single tower almost 
looking level-eyed on the summit of the hill and 
the double tower building a mass of majesty 
which makes the soul mute. As seen from the 
railway station more of the cathedral is visible, 
and there roof and towers tremendously dominate 
the scene and put the city into Lilliputian shadow. 
To have viewed this scene is to have climbed a 
high hill of prayer. The view from beautiful Elvet 
Bridge, where the huge tower is seen over the 
house roofs climbing the hill as if on their way 
to church, could do no other than hush the spirit 
to reverence and prayer. Great Durham! 

Lichfield has its spires. From the one side 
seems one heavenly spire which claims the sky, 
and from another side two equal spires salute the 
sky with the one spire standing back and silent, 
as looking on its sister spires, and all the spires 
meekly say, "We climb to God." Peterborough 
has one tower and many spires, as seen from the 
front, and each somehow lost in the other. Saint 
Albans has as a massive main feature one great 
tower to watch for morning to dawn. The spires 
are incidental. Wells Cathedral has one huge and 
engaging tower climbing from the center of the 
building like some lordly ascending flame, and at 
the four corners, like lesser flames, are spires aspir- 
ing yet a little above the huge bulk of sacred 
flame. Worcester Cathedral has spires at all cor- 
ners of the sacred fane, and these are crescendoed 

227 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

by a massive main tower impressive beyond the 
telling. Not a nobler spire can be conceived 
than that of Chichester Cathedral. It soars 
aloft like an angel. As a body walks up Eastgate 
Street, Chester, the spire of the Cathedral leaps 
from the ground at the street end and seems all 
there is except the sky. One sees no church: he 
only sees the spire — sweet sight and memorable! 
Ripon Cathedral crowds on the sight like the bulk 
of great hills. Roof and towers seem almost on a 
level, and all give such a sense of mass and age 
and enduringness as one seldom can encounter 
aside from the mountains. And what a sight the 
Cathedral of Ely is from the fens — high-climbing 
majesty with a tip of a spire flashing at lesser 
height like the very spirit of religion. Gloucester 
Cathedral from the paddock impresses the ob- 
server as all tower, huge as a cathedral where the 
multitudes might worship God. What impresses 
most at Hereford is the tower. Winchester Cathe- 
dral has a strong tower looking like the Rock of 
Ages. And then great Lincoln Cathedral seen by 
moonlight, where the three equal towers own the 
sky-landscape and appear built of solid moon- 
light! See that once and bear the sweet and 
blessed memory into eternity. It is all rapture. 

A church spire affects me as nothing else in 
architecture has the grace to do. It overshadows 
my heart, my imagination, my life. It has already 
passed into the chief poetry of landscape. Who- 
ever has learned to love Birket Foster's illustra- 

228 



CHURCH SPIRES 

tions as I have will recall how continuously the 
church tower and spire invade his landscapes. As 
the great Turner was wont to flash on high his 
cathedral through his Turnerian landscape as his 
"Rivers of France" so often do, so Birket Foster 
hangs the star of his church spire above a stretch 
of heath or hill or woodland. A scene going sylvan- 
wise no one knows whither is almost certain to 
have a spire on its distance touching into mellow 
poetry the world of human hearts which cluster 
about a little church. 

I have noted the effect of cattle on a landscape 
as I have traversed the thousands on thousands 
of miles of this Land of my Love and have found 
them gifting the scene with quiet as no other 
animals do — and have found my mind in quest of 
their secret. They have in them a rest, a rumina- 
tion, unknown to others, yet is that not all the 
history of why they infect a scene as sheep nor 
horses can do. They are an appanage of home. 
Cattle mean folks and house and evening. Wher- 
ever they pastured they incline to wend their way 
homeward at night by zigzag paths, as rooks from 
their far foraging by daylight row with black oars 
their black barges across the sunset sky into their 
rookery until they seem the world's good-night to 
the sunset. Cattle with zigzag path of following 
feet and with the tankle of the cowbell take their 
slow but certain path homeward when the shad- 
ows lengthen and the gloaming nears. Cattle 
are knit into the human story. Their deep 

229 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

though unseeing eyes have mutely watched our 
earthly dwellings. Not knowing that they do, 
they feel humanity. And where they feed or lie 
ruminating the human interest of them distills 
upon the scene. They quiet the landscape. They 
hush the babbling of the stream. It tends to be 
still water because of them. Wherever they pas- 
ture or lie at rest at panting noon they suggest 
the invisible inhabitants at whose gates they will 
lie down at night and await the dawn. There is 
something haunting and half pathetic to note, 
what I have often noted, how the cattle will, if 
they may not reach the near neighborhood of the 
house which they count home, at least gather and 
sleep at the nearest point thereto they may ap- 
proach. I have seen this so often as I have driven 
long distances through the dark. They want 
human companionship, and their presence does 
not disturb the slumbers even of such as lightly 
sleep. 

In some way like this, and different from this, a 
church steeple is such a homely, human thing, and 
the spire such a lovely and blessed thing. Old- 
World cathedrals stand strong as a mountain in 
the midst of city squalor and wrangle of petty 
trade and barter and stridency of voices, and 
calmly sweep upward into the ineffable sky where 
stars take their shining but momentous way. The 
cathedral is God's house even as it is man's house. 
They own it together. It is man's house and it is 
God's house too. It invades the city with the 

230 



CHURCH SPIRES 

presence of God and suggests and inspires and 
imposes his presence on the God's Acre lying near. 
For God's Acre is in the Cathedral's shadow. God 
is the God of men. He is a lonesome God without 
folks. He is a happy God with folks. 

It is well to catch the heaven-breath of the 
church, little or large. Life clusters about its 
base and eternal life clusters about its spire. 
Those little churches of England, which nestle 
into the landscape like a babe on the breast, all 
connote worship and praise and help and rest, 
and the nearness of God to man and the nearness 
and access of man to God. There is no other 
thought so high. To them the pathways lead 
across many a stile and field and beside many a 
gentle brook and in the shadow of many a hedge- 
row spilled full of skylark's ecstasy. All the path- 
ways converge to the little mossgrown church and, 
having reached that haven, rest. The church is 
so little, yet so large. Lake Windermere is not so 
compelling to one's memory as the little Words- 
worth church, a wee bit housie where nature-poet 
Wordsworth bowed his head in prayer. Not a 
vast cathedral, with the shadow of its tower 
thrown in the haunting river, impresses me. more 
nor gives more the sense of the great God. A 
least church with its tiny spire or tower has all 
the mystery of human trust and longing, and God 
to be had for the asking. Birket Foster loves the 
meadow, the sheep field and the sheep fold, the 

blithe water, the cottage rose-embowered, the 

231 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

goodman at the stile or porch, the hay making, 
the sundown, the lonely river, the boats waiting 
for the fishermen and the tide, the lone fisherman 
in the lonely boat on the darkening water, and all 
places of human love and longing and rejoicing 
and grieving; and there the church is set. He 
loves to place it there. In that sweet domestic 
scene, so human and so sturdy and so tender, the 
church spire roots like a climbing pine, but roots 
in the earth of the human instincts and social 
solidarity which must climb to God or be desolate, 
like a rack of wind-blown clouds over a great 
water. A church spire has its spiritual appeal 
which was bound to catch a poet-painter like 
Birket Foster. He has not misad ventured in his 
art. His artist genius rings clear as a church bell 
among the starry spaces of a summer night. I 
have adduced this artist because his hands painted 
the poetry of things and folks, and because more 
continuously and more certainly than anyone I 
know Birket Foster has felt this phase of landscape 
and has let it bloom like a flower where he passed. 
I authenticate my mood by him although I need 
not his authentication. It stands in its own right. 
I will trust my own soul in these heavenly matters. 
They require no certificate of character. 

At the writing of this essay the writer is a 
dweller in an apartment six floors up. This alti- 
tude gives a view, at the east end, of a huge 
cathedral, lovelier seen afar and aloft than on the 
ground and near at hand. Thus seen a lordly 

232 



CHURCH SPIRES 

dome springs on high and two spires controvert 
man's mortahty. As the night falls it is restful 
to the spirit to sit and consider the spectacle of 
praise and prayer. The calm of the place seems 
to hush the tempest of the surging city, though 
the dome does not move my spirit as a spire — even 
the domes of Saint Peter's at Rome and Saint 
Paul's in London. I am melted in spirit by the 
spire. There is spaciousness in a dome, but for 
me it does not touch the soul as the climb of the 
tower or the spring skyward of a spire. That, of 
course, is a matter of individual feeling and has 
no logic, any more than a kiss or a sigh or a 
prayer. From the other end of our sky dwelling 
we see one tower and two spires. They haunt me 
with a holy haunting which is the very presence 
of poetry. I watch for them at the pale gray of 
morning, at the white light of noon, in smoky 
skies with dim-seen landscape, in the rush and 
riot of sunset splendors, and in the palpitant 
moments which rush past as the day kisses the 
world good-by. I fear I spend more time than is 
allotted a busy man in considering these pre- 
possessions to prayer. They look mutely down 
on the city, yet not as despising it, but weeping 
over it, praying for it, dreaming the dreams a 
city should dream for itself, but is a little remiss 
in dreaming, or, deeper, totally remiss in dreaming. 
As I look at them from a distance and from their 
levels they seem strangely alone in their aspira- 
tion, loving the city below and dwelling above, 

233 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

and their holding as with hot hands of love and 
longing the hurly-burly, careless, sinful city to- 
ward the breast of God. It is a goodly sight of 
which I never tire. It rests me when I am weary 
and chimes to me though no bell rings from their 
silent chambers. And from one window, on a 
hilltop which ends the scene, is a spire — one, just 
one, and that one enough. Skyscrapers are on 
that hill, and the city lying beneath is packed with 
habitations and voices of to-day. That one soli- 
tary yet unlonely spire submerges them all. It is 
so airy, so ethereal, so built by the hands of 
prayer. It so spurts like the lift of some celestial 
frontier, is so rapt and away like a saint in ecstasy 
with God that it does with me as it will. I sit and 
watch it. I stand and watch it. I watch it when 
morning rises behind it (for the spire is in the 
east), and the morning mantles it with flame, 
with the glorious crimson of sunrise: I watch it 
when noon catches its breath from its long climb 
up the sky: I watch it mid-afternoon when the 
sunrays slant, like long-flight arrows shot by a 
strong flying angel of the Lord: I watch it when 
day staggers like a wounded soldier and falters 
into its fatal slumber: I watch it when the stars 
begin to peer from the heavenly doorways: watch 
it, and sometimes fall asleep with its minstrelsy 
of heaven harping in my heart and wake to look 
from the window and thank God it is still there. 
In Long Island is a little Methodist church 

which for spire loveliness and unspoken call to 

234 



CHURCH SPIRES 

God is worth traveling from sea to sea to glance 
upon but once; to look up, and then, seeing, wear 
the white wonder of the pointing finger of God 
away in the heart forever. The day I saw it there 
was a gray sea mist pattering now and then in 
rain. The east wind was blowing. A friend whose 
heart was lonely by the going of the wife of his 
love before him to the city of God was taking me 
about. The east wind of tears was blowing on 
his heart and eyes. We were on the way to the 
sea to hear the Atlantic billows beat against the 
sands and behold the sea intrude through gray- 
brown sea marshes on the land. Thus as we 
spoke of holy and heavenly things, and lands 
where partings do not kiss blind lips nor voices 
choke with grief, this church spire swam into our 
sky as if an angel came. It fairly took my breath, 
so swift an apparition it was and heavenly. The 
church was diminutive and meek in a little town 
but blooming with the alacrity and delight of a 
flower skyward, toward the land of which my 
friend and I had been discoursing. The church 
spire pointed exultant as the angel spake, clad in 
white raiment, sitting on the stone he had rolled 
from the sepulcher of God, crying like a trumpet, 
"He is arisen. He is not here, not here, arisen, 
arisen," and his voice was like the chiming of 
inimitable bells. Ah! little spire hard by the sea, 
you shall stand preeminent in the foreground of 
my heart what time I weep and sorely need to 

pray. 

235 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

In Providence, Rhode Island, the long-ago wor- 
shipers, followers of Roger Williams, built a meet- 
inghouse of wood and built a thing of dream, pure 
dream. Such as think themselves to know, and 
who love such things and may speak with some 
authority, count this place of prayer the most 
perfect bit of ecclesiastical .architecture in Amer- 
ica. Maybe so. I will not argue with them. I 
could not dispute it. It seems as if it rightfully 
might be that. I should wish it might be, as a 
tribute to the pure artistry of those early Amer- 
ican worshipers of God in a church out from the 
control of state. The building is pure white, as of 
unblemished marble, and seems as avid as a bird 
to spring into the sky, with its high white vision- 
ary spire, a creature of pure light, holding on high 
to there meditate on heavenly things. 

Once I was a pastor of Independence Avenue 
Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Mis- 
souri. The building is pure and courageous 
Gothic. The portal is a-bloom with lilies, the 
Easter lilies of the Lord, as if it were one lily 
bloom, to invite the Christ walking on the street 
to come in and tarry there till his weary feet 
were rested a little. The main spire is a glorious 
spring toward God. It is most visible of all that 
city holds, standing higher, seeing farther. How 
I used to love it, watching it in the dark up 
against the background of stars and a thing of 
kinship with the risings of the sun. I was its 
minister — nay, rather did it minister to me. The 

236 



CHURCH SPIRES 

lightning smote it thrice, pressed its kiss of fire 
upon its outstretched wings. No matter, sunrise 
kissed it too, and glorious morning and sunset 
skies, and it shined aloft like Ithuriel's spear. 

In Baltimore are two spires of special signifi- 
cance to a wistful spirit. One, on Mount Vernon 
Place Methodist Episcopal Church, which but for 
the spire of the First Presbyterian Church would 
have been imperial. It has its calm and cloud 
against the sky. The other spire balms the spirit. 
From a hospital I saw it best and first — from a 
hospital where pain was prevalent and death was 
busy. There I saw the spire spring — and against 
a sunset sky — and was filled with transfiguration. 
O! it was glorious and effectual, like a tryst with 
God. 

Hennepin Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church 
in Minneapolis, Minnesota, springs from its cen- 
tral roof with never a thing anywhere in the 
architecture to detract from it; a single spire for 
which no words can offer incense. It seems slight 
as a child's finger, frail as a moonbeam, but will 
prove lasting as the world and haunting as a 
hymn sung by martyrs about to press the lips of 
death. You must see it for your heart's delight 
and be requited for your quest. 

In Washington, the capital city of the Land of 
Dreams, is a spire of the Metropolitan Memorial 
Methodist Episcopal Church. It is set near the 
Capitol, with its great dome and its magnificent 

bulk. It is in fair stone's throw of that noblest 

237 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

obelisk in the whole world, Washington Monu- 
ment. It is neighbor to many buildings of the 
government which challenge admiration for their 
simple and noble proportions. It is hard by the 
Library of Congress, that housing-place of a na- 
tion's literature and rendezvous of the students of 
our hemisphere. In such surroundings what 
should a church do but cower in ineffectual 
humiliation .f^ It has what none of these massive 
edifices of legislation, knowledge, administration 
possess: it has a spire. That church house is an 
explanation of the existence of all these. The 
Church of God begot this American scene and 
civilization. The church is the sweet, diminutive 
mother of these sturdy sons. America is a Chris- 
tian civilization or it is no civilization at all. And 
this church sends up its spire at once alluring, 
unique, and majestic. How my heart thrills to it 
as to a mountain peak at morning! It inspires 
the scene. The dome of the Capitol hangs aloft, 
fixed, finished, but the spire seeks a flight into the 
sky and the flight just begun. It is transcendent. 
No terminus, just a lift of wing for a far flight 
begun and the end of the flight behind all the 
stars into that morning which breaks but never 
sets. The spire's flight of aspiration is over to 
where God stays. 

I know a village tree-embowered. It has a rail- 
road station, a grocery store, a blacksmith shop, 
a post oflSce, and a grange hall. I think a half 
dozen would make an abundant count of the 

238 



CHURCH SPIRES 

houses. And a church is there, and across the 
street the manse. You may never see the church, 
as the train tarries in the station or passes puffingly 
through the town. But a spire tops the town. I 
look forward to seeing it as I gaze at a flight of 
doves white-breasted, white-winged, swift of flight 
against the fury of a gale. Such a modest spire 
among the trees, yet so haunting, so ministrant, 
so silent yet singingly vocal in its evangel. "Here 
we pray, we mortal folk, trust in God, love him, 
and listen to and heed the preacher's words, and 
repent us of our sins, and trust in God for our sal- 
vation, and make our slow sure way to the Better 
Land," so says the spire. I pass by many a brave 
metropolis overgrown with cares and business 
success with a casual glance and forget the name 
and the features of the city; but a hurried travel- 
glance on this holy hortation of this little spire in 
this little town, springing above the treetops as 
to invite the trees to cast their passing incense to 
the winds in love of the Christ who planted the 
trees of the field and prayed beneath their shadows. 
Many cities I pass through and forget. This little 
town of the White Spire I shall not forget while I 
live. To my own soul I have christened it "The 
Village of the Spire." Stars, shed starlight softly, 
lest ye disturb its holy meditation on the things of 
God. My Village of the Spire, good night ! Sweet 
dreams and good night, a hushed and hallowed 
good night. 

A single spire colors an entire field of land and 

239 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

sky as a sunrise does, flooding all below and far 
up and back behind things with the pure white 
flame of the spire not kindled on the ground. It 
is spilled through the sky, not from it, and from 
a sun which is hidden from our eyes, yet, unseen, 
empties glory on the clouds. This shining light 
reports God to us, sets God down on us like a 
heaven of heavens. 

And a spire at night. How shall I explicate that 
mystery of spirit when starlight or moonlight in- 
verts its urn and spills all its magical luminosity 
out on the dark, turning it into an enchanted 
land.^ The church spire soars to meet that mys- 
tical light as if it were itself a shaft of light — yet 
not falling down from the sky but leaping ecstati- 
cally into heaven; and earth becomes in it a 
luminary in its own right, lifting itself on high 
as a shaft of shadowy glory. One fears that the 
flight of a night moth might shatter it. Howbeit 
not the shock of an earthquake nor the crash of 
worlds can dissipate that insinuative glory. A 
thing of earth it is and a thing of heaven. 

And I ruminate seeing a spire sweep past which 
I see from the rushing train. A flash like a sea 
gull's wing, with a blue sky above and blue below, 
and a church spire to record that there behind 
was a valley where the weary rested, and by day 
and night the parents of little children prayed 
that, waking or sleeping, their children might be 
the Lord's, and where God was no stranger to 
those village folks, but came their way and tarried 

240 



CHURCH SPIRES 

at their house and in it. A rush of a train, a flash 
of white spire; and I heard a multitude of angels 
sing, and my face was fanned by the perfumed 
breath of angel wings set blowing on my heart. 

I know a little village scarcely bigger than a 
bunch of hollyhocks, and a spire is there. And 
though I have seen it times now counting into 
hundreds I watch for it like weary ones watch for 
morning, or as I watch for a face I love. I would 
travel that way with no other reason than to catch 
my passing glance of that spirit of inspiration and 
the voice of that visible prayer. The village, the 
spire said, was God's. The village wants God, and 
the spire made that affirmation visible and audible. 
I hear their choir chanting with subdued voice, and 
I feel the village heart singing "My Father and my 
God." This is a kindly thing, a tenderly human 
thing, an earthly-heavenly thing. For our God is 
a homely yet heavenly Father for homely folks. 
He never passes our little interests by, assiduous 
as he is orbiting the stars. He nestles us on his 
breast and fondles those that be motherless and 
hushes the weary and the sick among us to slum- 
ber with his balm and energizes our activities with 
the inflow of his energy. "Human the church is 
and divine" : and so are we. So saith the spire. 

And in the dusk to walk a country road whose 

only lamp is stars, and on a road whose dust is 

lately laid by the kindly passing of a shower, and 

while the flush slowly and surely falters from the 

sky how sweet it is in surprise to come upon the 

24X 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

spire of a country church standing unlonely in its 
loneliness, passing lordly in its solitude and sim- 
plicity! Where are the country folk who worship 
here? I see afar a kindly lit lamp which soon 
blows out, for they are weary and seek rest. But 
the church spire seems to keep watch, as to say, 
"I will be your watchman," and through the 
crickets' chir and those insistent and delicious 
voices of the night I seem to hear, "The Lord 
bless thee and keep thee, the Lord lift up his coun- 
tenance upon thee and give thee peace." It is the 
spire whispering. The Lord who tucks the birdie's 
head beneath its wing and bids it be unafraid is 
here. Birds are they whose nest is the heart of 
God. I will dream on this country road, and 
while I dream in the presence of the church spire 
I will pray. 

I watch for the spires, that is the sum of it. I 
set them down among my beatitudes. On some 
dreamy evening when my slow heart pulse ticks 
out the closing minutes of my life's little day upon 
the ground I feel assured that I shall see with 
dimming eyes, in that dimming dusk, a church 
spire climbing out of my evening dust against the 
background of the dull night sky and pointing like 
a smile of God to that fair city where I shall have 
my certain welcome from Him whose name the 
church spire half whispered and half sang to me 
in voice of love through all my yearning years and 
shall chime to me, a pilgrim welcome home. 

In one of the divine pictures of the great Turner 

242 



CHURCH SPIRES 

rises a white church tower high above the heights 
of the city there, and high above the actual 
height of that cathedral tower as seen by the eyes 
of casual travelers, but not as seen by the eyes of 
that astonishing artist. It stands very high, and 
white as a sheaf of light, "like the finger of God," 
to use that haunting phrase that slipped from the 
lips of him who knew more about God than all 
men that have ever lived. ' Is not this the finger 
of God?" said he. That shaft of light dominates 
the scene and flings as by compulsion all about it 
into diminutive shadow. This picture is a parable 
of every cathedral and every little church any- 
where. It is light and leading, and shines away 
the shadows and lets in the Light of Lights eternal. 

A spire softens the landscape, gives it an Inness 
effect, soothes the scene, shuts out the glare, and in 
its place brings a purple dusk where meditation 
may fold its hands and courage knit up its "rav- 
eled sleave of care" (Thank you, Will Shake- 
speare!) and God comes softly, not as the Great 
Intruder, but as the best Friend life ever knows; 
and his touch on the heart is the beatitude of our 
time and our eternity. 

And then, the music! The church towers and 
spires are nests of melody. The heavenly songs 
sing from these uplands in the skies. No one can 
catch a word cunning enough in beauty to contain 
or even suggest the minstrelsy of bells. No church 
should be without them. The angels who sang 
that sweet night in the skies were the forerunners 

243 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

of the church bells of the whole Christian world. 
The cunning poetry of that singing episode of the 
gospel caught the heart of the lovers of the Christ, 
and they saw that there should be aloft the sing- 
ing in the night and day. In cathedral and church 
are instruments of music. There the organ holds 
forth like the instrumentation of the sea: there 
sits the dreamer of the keys. Music becometh 
God's house. That is a truism of the faith once 
delivered to the saints. Where Christ is there is 
melody. "Making melody in your heart unto 
God," said the radiant apostle, knowing full well 
that when the music is there it drips down on all 
the rooms of life. We have the melody. We have 
caught the song. No silence is possible when once 
the Everlasting Melody has caught us by the hand 
and by the heart. The logic of this beautiful 
obsession, this transcendent occupation, must work 
itself out. There is no stopping it. How well we 
know that, if we watch the procession of those 
poets who have had the Minstrel make their heart 
his home ! So in the church are the choir, and the 
organ, and the trumpet, and all such things of lip 
or finger which swing out into the air the vibrant 
ecstasies of the heart. A church is a house of the 
heart; and what things become a heart become a 
church. Love becomes the heart and song springs 
out of love as rainbows out of rain and dayspring 
out of the arisen sun. A singing heart and a sing- 
ing church are what the chiming bells declare. So 
when a body sees a church spire there is the mute 

244 



CHURCH SPIRES 

sense of minstrelsy and all high hope that flowers 
in song. 

Waiting for a train in a village as night was 
coming on, and walking to and fro to catch the 
air upon my face, I marked near the railroad a 
little church, small to the dimension of minuteness, 
and it had been invisible to me but for the finger 
of a spire. Whoever had built the spire had scant 
skill in the doing of it. It was a lamentable 
architectural achievement, while as a spiritual at- 
titude and expression it cleansed my thought and 
fancy, and hallowed my spirit, and took me by 
the hand and led me to prayer. I knew it was a 
church, that little edifice. I knew that there hun- 
gry hearts prayed, that there on sunny and cloudy 
days, in days of storm and wild blowing of the 
wind and swirling of snows, people trudged to the 
house of rest and the house of God, and that on 
days blest with sunshine and fragrant with sum- 
mer and the ripening of the wheat thither came 
blithely men and women and little children with 
many quips of laughter and dancing feet. They 
all came to the house of God. I saw all that and 
felt it more than by seeing it with my physical 
eyes. Indeed, I did not need to see it physically, 
for the church house and the church spire wrought 
upon my spirit so that for the moment I needed 
physical sight no more than did the great blind 
Milton. And as the day darkened, and the dark- 
ness deepened and the night lights began to blaze 
indoors and out, the steeple spoke: the bell began 

245 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

to ring. Truly it was a bell which could have 
taken no credit for its voice. It was a pitiful 
falsetto. Music was a thing of which it could not 
in any veracity have been accused. All this I 
knew. I am not quite color-blind to melody. I 
love the dulcet note of bird voices in mating time, 
and mother voices singing babes to sleep at twi- 
light, and great congregations in the swell and 
ecstasy of sacred hymnody. No, I am not quite 
inexpert myself in melody — having not sung lustily 
myself and so having listened while others sang. 
Yet to my spirituality that trivial bell in its trivial 
misshapen steeple, ringing out in unmelodious 
tones across the little town, discoursed great music 
like the swelling sea. It rang out the tune called 
"God with us," I, myself, singing with unmelo- 
dious voice but from a heart at love with him and 
his mankind and mine. To my ears the incon- 
sequent ringing of the bell set all the bells in my 
spirit ringing and all the holy tunes were on my 
lips which my words cannot express. Hearts that 
know the holy Christ, in reverent singing, though 
by lips and voices which cannot express what 
their hearts know, to me far surpass all the melody 
of trained voices with all finesse of harmony. The 
heart has a sweeter hymn book than any voice 
may hope to express. Any mother singing to her 
child, any man humming to himself some heav- 
enly air because his heart has learned a hymn, 
moves me as all your Carusos with their operatic 
sound and fury are incompetent to do. O, little 

246 



CHURCH SPIRES 

church, in little hamlet, with your funny little 
steeple and its ridiculously untuned bell, you seem 
sonorous to me, like the dream-call of great winds 
in great pines, only you enunciate the words the 
pines cannot form their lips to. Through you I 
hear the angels singing and the sons of God. 

So many things I hear and heed not. They 
leave no impress on my larger self. They do not 
even make a raindrop print on the dry dust of my 
spirit. So many voices I hear and wish them 
hushed, and when they become mute I make my 
praises. Not so with the sacred chimes of this 
untuned bell in its hint of a steeple. Not so. It 
was trying to chant the call to prayer and the 
invitation to hurried folk, who must some time die, 
to come and wait upon the Lord. Ah! no thunder 
in the bleak skies, nor up-climb of great moun- 
tains, has known to do with my spirit what this 
church bell in its trivial tower has done. And now, 
far away from that scene and falling darkness, it 
all comes back to me: the little timorous bell and 
its little spire, in its little town and with its un- 
known folk, I class it among the great minstrels 
within my soul. 

What a beautiful thing it is to install chimes in 
a church tower in the name of some man or some 
woman who when alive made music in the world 
by being and seeing and doing things which over- 
bear people's doubts and fears and waverings and 
turn their lives into heavenly chiming. I should 
love to have a church tower or church steeple 

247 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

and a carillon of bells named after me. That 
seems to me the very radiancy of ministry; that is 
**to make undying music in the world," and being 
dead yet to speak, and being voiceless yet to sing. 
It is to make undying music in the world in a 
roomier fashion than George Eliot intended when 
she penned that fine line. The carillon, which 
through the years and centuries of years in dusk 
or day, in stress or storm, in sea mist, in the wit- 
less wind, on the wide moor, where prairies stretch 
away to meet the skies, in remote valleys where 
the cattle sleep, by silent flowing rivers or by the 
adventurous sea to hail the ships that pass their 
headlands, wherever they ring, all who go that 
way know that the Lord is calling, and the caril- 
lons are the songsters of the heavenlies and singing, 
"This way lieth peace." 

Often have I in some strange or familiar vicin- 
ity, when birds were calling their last good-night 
with sleepy voices and children's voices were grow- 
ing mute, when the dusk hushed all to hear the 
starlight speak and listen to the footfall of the 
dew, there when the voices of the world would be 
a sure intrusion, often have I heard the calling of 
a mellow bell across the approaching dark. I 
could have heard the footfall of the dew and the 
eloquence of stars; and the church bells did not 
disturb nor intrude on that sacred silence. They 
melted into the mood of the coming night. The 
whisper of the Lord became by them the more 
articulate. They gently push all holy suggestions 

248 



CHURCH SPIRES 

through the open or half-open door of the spirit. 
They bathe the landscape in a celestial comfort. 
They break upon the heart a box of ointment of 
spikenard, very precious, whose odors fill every 
room of the heart. On such a landscape, strange 
in every feature or very familiar so I could wander 
through the dark and not go astray, when the 
church bell lifts its hallowed voice I feel restfully 
at home. I am not far from my own hearth but 
wandering dreamfully toward it. 

I know a little town embowered in trees, haunted 
by the happiest memories of my life, where I have 
often gone loiteringly beyond the habitations so 
as to be out of sight, but not out of sound, when 
the church bell should awaken from its slumber of 
the day and give its angel music to the dark. The 
fathomless peace of the deep-throated music 
eclipses the peace of the stars and the solemn arch 
of the sky. I walk as about to invade eternity. 
I have a friend. He now lives with God behind 
the morning, in a deeper morning. If any suggest 
that I should say I had a friend I must denominate 
his suggestion a blind saying. I have a friend just 
as when he was fellow traveler with me among the 
mountains where we used to go and wander among 
mountaintops and stars with vagrant delight. A 
dear friend of my friend and me wrote, "At eleven 
o'clock Saturday night our dear friend was not, 
for God took him. He went away in his sleep," 
and then this friend signed himself, "Faithfully 
yours, in hope of life everlasting," then appended: 

249 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

"They rest from their labors." How shall I ac- 
count such a friend as stepping into the past tense 
of my heart? He is, I am, and we live. I have 
my feet, he has his wings, and we journey in the 
same direction, with the same light upon the path. 
It is such talk the church bells make across the 
landscape of the dusk. I feel the unity and per- 
sistency and permanency of life, and the nearness 
of the far and the neighborliness of my immortal 
life; and life mortal and life eternal shake hands 
in the church spire. When the bell sings out earth 
and heaven are but one landscape, and across it 
all shines the amazing radiancy of the smile of 
God. 

Haecfahula docet: Let every church have a spire, 
and every spire a bell ! 

Ring on, ye gold-throat bells, and bathe the 
quiet sky with minstrelsy and billow across God's 
Acre, where the happy dead in the Lord rest from 
their labors and their works do follow them — aye, 
and precede them. Poe's "Bells" are clamorous 
discords compared with the hush-melody of church 
bells which from church spires distills like dew 
upon the dusk and through the dusk upon the 
heart. Sing on, O holy chimes, nor silence ye till 
Time shall make its adieu and Eternity shall come 
in with its ringing of the bells of heaven. 



250 



XVI 
A BUNCH OF WILD FLOWERS 

They Wait for Me 

They wait for me in distant lands, 
That fellowship exceeding sweet. 

And reach toward me exultant hands 
And with glad smiles my coming greet. 

Of that dear throng, some have I known 

To greatly love along my way. 
And they have happy memories thrown 

Round many a lovely yesterday. 

Their faces are so fair to see, 
So lovely to my heart's best dream. 

That with them I could gladly be 
By shadowed path or sunny stream. 

I long for them; they long for me; 

The way grows weary for their looks. 
Their voices are my minstrelsy. 

Their faces are my winsome books. 

They wait for me, those blessed folk. 

Whom in God's grace niy voice has reached 

And words of mine did them invoke 

What time they listened to me preach. 

251 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

They wait for me whom I knew not; 

But on the way I fared along 
My outstretched hand their hand had caught 

Amidst the many of the throng. 

They wait for me, my loved and lost. 

In whose departure I am sad, 
Whose gravestones with the years are mossed, 

Whose dying left a lonesome lad. 

I see a woman's radiant face. 

And crowned with hair of billowy gold, 
I know her by her tender grace, 

My mother love no tongue hath told. 

I see a man with steady gaze. 

Bronzed with sea-breath and prairie wind. 
Who walks with God the pleasant ways 

And calls "My boy!" with accents kind. 

I see unnumbered faces where 

A heaven of welcome shines for me. 

Nor any line of pain or care 
Is on their sweet tranquillity. 

They wait for me. Toward them I walk 

With hesitant or hasting feet. 
I shall join in their heavenly talk 

And with them shall our Master meet. 

252 



A BUNCH OF WILD FLOWERS 

My years are there: my days are here. 

Bright days that speed Hke hasting wind; 
But yon infinitude of cheer 

Shall leave these radiant days behind. 

They wait for me, my friends in God! 

My place of rest is in their heart. 
What time soe'er I walk abroad 

Toward them I walk to never part. 

Skirting the Dawn I Saw a River Fair 

Skirting the dawn I saw a river fair, 
Far-wandering and very full of light, 
Where every ripple ran with wonder bright. 

And all the river lay with bosom bare 

And smiled, so radiant and free from care; 

And all the banks with grasses green were dight. 
The river shimmered in a deep delight 

When morning whitened ere the world was ware. 

Fade not, sweet river, in a gloom of night. 
Wind on and on along the shining plain. 

Take shadows of the grasses on thy brink 

And golden fleece of clouds in happy flight 
And the low-flying swallows come again 

And soft-eyed cattle come to thee to drink. 

How Still Thou Art, O Quiet of the Dark! 

How still thou art, O quiet of the dark! 

The birds are nested under mother-wings, 

And hushed is every daylight voice that sings, 

And mute as a dead voice the meadow lark. 

253 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

Caught by the hands of dreams I dimly mark 
The spacious quiet. Spiritual things 
Crowd on me dimly like the hush of wings 

As I do slowly on the night embark. 

I grow ethereal as the upper skies; 

I grow august as souls at judgment seat: 

I grow supreme like daylight in the east: 

I hush my spirit to the wide surmise 
Of what I am and where my weary feet 

Shall fare when I am from the night released. 

The Songs 

What is the song thou singest, Bird, 
A-sway on the tossing grass? 

Thy song has never a lonely word. 
But gleeful as winds that pass. 

What is the song thou singest. Brook, 
Beneath thy dusk of pines .^^ 

Thine eyes have such a dreamy look. 
Thy lips chant haunting lines. 

What is the song thou singest, Heart, 
Where tears and laughters swim.^^ 

Like eyes of lovers that meet and part 
When hearts are full to the brim. 

Hush, Hush; Why Weepest Thou? 

Hush, hush; why weepest thou? 

The day is brief. 

Thou hast so little while — 

Why nurture grief? 
254 



A BUNCH OF WILD FLOWERS 

The dusk is on thy track. 

And, Hke a thief. 
Will in a moment hence 

Steal flower and leaf. 

Wherefore, I bid thee smile: 

Give laughter room 
That in thy little while 

Life should have bloom. 

A Song 

Blow, Happy Wind, about my heart. 

Thou art so dear to me. 
Blow, Happy Wind, and be a part 

Of my heart's minstrelsy. 

Blow, Happy Wind, and in thy voice 
Twine lark and bluebird songs. 

To make my happy heart rejoice. 
For thee my being long 

Blow, blow, I would not have thee cease. 

Thou ecstasy like wine; 
Blow, blow with swift and strange increase- 

Thy lyrics all are mine. 

If blow thou wilt, my heart shall sing 

Some song it did not know. 
And in my heart like bluebird's wing, 

Unwithering violets grow. 

Blow on, blow on, O Happy Wind. 

255 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

Break Forth Into Fire 

Break forth into fire, Dim East! 

The night is spent. 

Where stars were sprent 
Is now of them releast. 

Break forth nto fire, Gray Dawn! 

Nor shade thine eyes 

With wild surprise 
That darkness is withdrawn. 

Break forth into fire, Blue Sky! 

Thy pallor sweet 

For star-rise meet 
Must vanish like a sigh. 

Break forth into fire. Daybreak! 

While flocks and herds 

And babes and birds 
At thy wild torch awake. 

If God Shall Lift Me from the Frozen 

Ground 

If God shall lift me from the frozen ground 
Where I, a winter pilgrim, prostrate lie, 
And frost and famine do my strength defy. 

And where, swoon-caught as slain, he hath me 

found, 

256 



A BUNCH OF WILD FLOWERS 

Sunk in a stupor where no clangorous sound 
Could make me heed my heavenly destiny 
Or any kindly greeting make, or cry 

In swift response, nor any voice astound; 

So, then, if the Almighty God shall lift 

Me up with generous strength immixed with 
pain. 

And set me on my stumbling, inert feet, 

Shall not I count his help my shoreless gift, 
And reckon love to be my mainmost gain, 

And grow a crop of love like golden wheat? 

Great Silent Captain 

Ulysses S. Grant 

What has the silence of sagacious years 
Wrought with thy fame, when thundering guns 

have hushed 
Their plaintive and tremendous minstrelsy, 
Great silent captain of the bearded face 
And armed hand and unalarmed look? 
The battle glamor faded, art thou come 
To march amongst the ranks of little men 
To which the happy crowd of life belongs 
And where thou wouldst be glad to come and 

stay? 

Was war a flaming torch to lift aloft 

And when the torch is out the face is lost? 

In that innumerable company 

To which most fame must bring itself at length 

Art thou a guest? and doth thy shadow stand 

257 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

A lessened majesty? Are we bereft 
Of our great chieftain whom the Nation loved 
To praise? Is thy flame vanished like a torch 
Burnt out? Are those who loved to slur thy name 
Come conquerors? Or have their voices died 

away 
To silence as was their desert? What, ho! 
Who walks across the windy spaces wide 
With springing step and mighty martial tread, 
And tireless as the rise and fall of tides, 
Triumphant as the advent of the dawn. 
All red and gold, his silent sword at sheath. 
His gentle eyes unamorous of war. 
His silent lips apart and making speech 
And with an eloquence outsounding swords 
And diapason of the cannon's roar? 
"Let us have peace." Not cannon's hot-throat 

words 
Have right of way across majestic years 
Like those strange words of peace from warrior lips. 
They leap like swords — not counsel but command. 
They clang and charge and march across the 

world. 
The battle mooded mandate for a peace 
As wide as landscape shined on by the flag. 
Great Silent Captain, whose discourse has set 
A banner in the sky which every wind 
Flings far and every eye beholds and voice 
Applauds. This man of mighty war becomes 
The orator of peace. The rusted guns 

Are still: the swords seek everlasting sheath. 

258 



A BUNCH OF WILD FLOWERS 

And peace each morning plucks a dewy wreath 
Wherewith to bind the Silent Captain's brow; 
And Death for aye like shout of seas calls loud, 
"He gave the countersign, let him march past." 

A House Not Made With Hands 

"A HOUSE not made with hands" — 
O clinging phrase and sweet — 

Apart in summer lands, 

W^ere those, long parted, meet. 

WTiere woe and haste are dead, 

And homelessness is past, 
W^ere nothing dwells to dread 

And all things worth-while last. 

Here, hands with toil are hard. 

And then built but a tent, 
WHiich we must soon discard 

And which storm winds have rent. 

But yon in that dear land 

A house for souls at rest, 
Where weary brows are fanned 

With winds from out God's west. 

The Port of Ships 

I KNOW not where the drift of seas 

Shall bring my little boat to land, 

Nor from what compass-point the breeze 

Which wafts me toward a hidden strand. 

259 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

But well I know that where I sail 
Is toward the Harbor of the Sky, 

And that I surely shall not fail 
To make that haven by and by. 

My pact with God is ever this — 

To keep upon the waters wide 
When wave and wind shall bravely kiss 

My craft I shall be satisfied. 

By wild winds blown and gruff waves tossed. 
What is that stormy waste to me 

Who cannot in their storms be lost. 
Whose rest is in Infinity.'^ 

Some time my boat, at port afar 

Where crowd the ships from many seas. 

Shall safe within that harbor bar 
A respite find, and song, and ease. 

O Port of Ships, O Golden Strand, 

O wistful haven far away, 
My bark rocks toward thy sun-drenched land 

To cast glad anchor in that bay. 

Blow, Heavenly Breath 

Blow, heavenly breath. 
Nor cease, nor cease, 
And banish death. 

Blow peace, blow peace. 

260 



A BUNCH OF WILD FLOWERS 

Blow, holy wind, 

By night, by day, 
And violets find 

On hidden way. 

Blow, Spirit sweet. 
With endless Spring. 

Blow, fleet; blow, fleet. 
On heavenly wing. 

Blow wild as storm, 
Blow kind as calm. 

Bring earth reform 
And night and balm. 

Blow, Spirit strong, 

Till winters cease 
For hearts that long 

For summer peace. 

Across my soul 

Snowbound and chill. 
Like night skies roll 

And blow and thrill. 

Blow, Holy Ghost, 

Exceeding strong, 
Unto that coast 

W^ere I belong. 

Blow, ever blow 

Thy minstrelsy. 

While ages go, 

Blow endlessly. 
261 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

Thy blowing breath. 

Thy heartening, 
Now wandereth 

Like wild birds' wing, 

Across my skies. 

Across my ground. 
Like stars that rise, 

Like flutes that sound. 

Blow, breath eterne, 

Nor haste, nor rest 
Until I yearn 

Unto thy breast. 

Blow like the breath 

From oflF the sea 
That hearteneth — 

Blow over me. 



A JOURNEYER 

The bank with violets was blue; 

The blue sky sprang its arch aloft! 
The bluebird called "Bermuda" to 

The lifting hill and leaning croft. 

Blue was the dim and distant hill. 

And blue the dim and distant sea 

To which in singing haste the rill 

Would come in due time tranquilly. 
262 



^ 



A BUNCH OF WILD FLOWERS 

And blue the eyes of one I knew 
Who fared across from sea to hill. 

Sweet as the wind at evening dew 
And mournful as the whip-poor-will. 

And in some blue of boundless sky 
Him shall I find in spaces far 

WTiere radiant spirits do not die. 
But tireless dwell as angels are. 

A Battle Cry 

O LAVE me be. 

Ye checkered years — 

Wance had I glee, 
Now tears, all tears. 

Now lave me be. 

I had my rest 
So swift and free 

Upon his breast. 
Who lieth dead 

I know not where. 
And flowers are fed 

And beauties wear 
From his dead breast 

On which I lay 
Supremely glad 

On yesterday. 

O lave me, lave 

To my despair. 
To vanished dreams 

That once were fair. 

263 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

No light now gleams 
From my lone grave. 

So far to go 

And go alone! 
The south winds blow 

As they have blown 
And bring but woe. 

Ah, lave me be, 
Mayhap I'll die 

And flee, and flee 
To thee, dear bye. 



And Trouble Faileth in a Sweet Content 

When all the night is lamped with stars besprent 

Along its every devious avenue 

On those far spaces where the winds that blew 
Made the stars blink almost to languishment. 
And all the solemn darkness broods with bent 

And studious forehead; and, like drops of dew, 

The stars shine the untedious darkness through 
And trouble faileth in a sweet content. 

Then Soul hath room to tiptoe to the height 
Of scathless altitudes. Its bitter stress 

Abated for a breath, it stands serene 

And garbs its majesty in stellar light 

Disrobes itself of earthly bitterness 

And claims its kinship to the vast unseen. 

264 



A BUNCH OF WILD FLOWERS 

Just to Be With the World of Things and 

Men 

Just to be with the world of things and men. 
The night smells, and the streams that sleep 

and wake. 
The prairies, and the mountaintops that take 

The thousand mornings to their heart and then 

Are yearning for a thousand more. The glen 
WThere droop the solemn pines and aspens quake. 
And gentle herds at hot noon meekly slake 

Their thirst at bubbling streams and browse again. 

The sleepy noon, the restful nights which share 
The mystery of death and time and space. 

The kisses of the lips of love, the mist 

Along the streams, the cornshocks and the flare 
Of prairie-fires at night, the tideless grace 

Which never sears while love and earth hold tryst. 

The Martyr's Answer 

"What recompense have I?" I hear thee ask. 
Although my ears are dimmed a little, since 
Oft partial martyrdoms have made me wince 

And seared my faculties. The martyr-task 

Is not an easy yoke. The crimson flask 
Of fire oft times have I drunk of to rinse 
Down bitterness of other sort. My Prince 

Was crucified. I fain would wear His mask. 

What recompense have I, a martyr maimed, 
Whose flesh is torn with lions' teeth and claws. 

To whom one other heart-leap brings the end? 

265 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

All recompense! A Master not ashamed 

To love me and to take me when life draws 
Near night and say, "Brave heart, stout heart, 
good friend." 

Soul, Try Once More 

They broke my sword across their knee 
And shouted, "Coward" far and near 

Because I fled as cowards flee 
To shun the battle and its fear. 

I slunk into the ranks unknown: 
My weapon was my broken sword. 

I heard the tune of battle blown: 

I climbed the hill with death-shot scored. 

With trembling knees and ashen face 
My half -sword multiplied its blows 

And hacked away my dull disgrace 
Until the cry of "Hero" rose. 

The Port of Days 

The sudden glory wastes: 

The day is spent. 
The eager darkness hastes. 

My desert tent 

Is hushed and spectral white: 

The huge stars blaze. 
Swift falls the dreamful night, 

The Port of Days. 

266 



A BUNCH OF WILD FLOWERS 

The glory clouds. The winds 

Come wistfully, 
A shoreless patience finds 

My tent and me. 

One glory fades away; 

Another dawns. 
Night floats into the day 

Like silent swans. 

And wonder lights a torch 

To drown its light. 
Beyond the desert's scorch 

In star-sprent night. 

From sun to sun we climb 
Through night and gloom, 

From reckless Winter's prime 
To Spring and bloom. 



All Day with God 

One word with Thee is conquest; 

One touch of Thee is calm. 
The radiance of Thy presence 

Makes all my day a psalm. 

To hear Thee in the morning 

Say, "Welcome to this Day," 
Makes all my deeds of service 

A happy holiday. 

267 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

To hear Thee in the noontide 

Say, "Break thou bread with me," 

Doth change my daily hunger 
To sacrament with Thee. 

To hear Thy voice at evening 
Say, "Tired child, take rest," 

Is better than the moonlight, 
Or gentle mother breast. 

Thus every day is comfort 

When spent, my Lord, with Thcc. 

And every step is onward: 
And all's all well with me. 



When Anger Faileth Through Sheer Lack 

OF Strength 

When anger fails me and lips passionate 

Emit no more wild words like leaping swords 
To rush with turbulence as ruthless hordes 

In deep despite of right with burning hate 

To ravage and destroy, cooperate 
For any evil, no emollient words 
Nor any hasting blood-drenched sword affords 

A hint at recompense until too late. 

When anger faileth through sheer lack of strength 

But hate bides still, though frozen, in the breast 
And bleak soul darkens grimly to the night 

Of death, when all is past and life at length 

Hath only sullen sunset in the west, 

What chance hath such a darkness for the light? 

268 



A BUNCH OF WILD FLOWERS 

A Day to Dream of 

A DAY to dream of and to speak 

Its happy fame in paradise. 
Where never any day is bleak 

Nor laughters fail in anywise. 

How swift the wind and soft and cool ! 

What singing birds their love-lilts lift! 
The clouds lean to the wayside pool 

And there they rest or, restful, drift. 

And far and near the grasses toss 
To all the winds that wander wide: 

And life denies all wintry loss; 

And graves and sorrows are defied. 

And carols every gold-breast lark; 

And pipe the quails with mellow note; 
And joy, all joy, from dawn to dark 

Laughs loud from every feathered throat. 

While I as glad as waters wide. 

Make gleeful way through prairie grass 

And am to all glad things allied 
That come and sing and never pass. 

I Wonder Why 

My laugh is tinctured with a tear; 
The sunset lurks along my sky; 
A heartache mingles with my cheer; 

I, smiling, moan, I know not why. 

269 



THE UNCOMMON COMMONPLACE 

Autumnal tints like dripping blood 
Spray all my landscape far and wide. 

The summer, rushing as a flood. 
Blends in the moaning of the tide. 

The dewy darkness lays its hand 
On all the daylight, sun-lit glad. 

My heart, elate, along the sand 
In springtime walks and yet is sad. 

I cannot quit me of this sphere 

Where death his sable treasure gains, 

Habituated to the tear 

Which ever falls like autumn rains. 

My laughter rings like trumpets loud. 
Glad draughts I take at wayside springs; 

Though all the while my heart is bowed 
Like caged bird with flightless wings. 



I Cannot Hear Thee Speak, O Crystal 

Heart ! 

I CANNOT hear thee speak, O Crystal Heart! 
The music of thy voice is grown diffused 
Like precious ointment very long time used 
Till what was very much, is now a part 
So small that for its merchandise no mart 
Is found. I listen, listen, sorely bruised 
As one, sea-waves have caught and flung, con- 
fused 

270 , 



A BUNCH OF WILD FLOWERS 

On wreck-strewn sands. Thy voice is lost, Dear 

Heart! 
But I shall hear it yet. To-morrow comes. 
This day is not the only day God hath 
Writ calmly down in His sweet calendar. 
Amidst confused crash of swords and drums 
Thy words fade out. I wait. Life's aftermath 
Hath silence where Love's voice chimes very far. 

"They Have No Weary Nights in Paradise" 

They have no weary nights in Paradise, 

Where through long hours they lie awake in pain 

Nor listen to the cadence of the rain. 

Which falls upon the roof. No sweet surmise 

Of respite on the spirit drips, nor guise 

Of angel ministrant of balm. They wane — 

Those grim and wakeful hours so slowly, fain 

To crush the sufferer in anywise. 

But then, in Paradise no baleful hours 

Of nights or days in pain. No nights are there 

With gloom apparelled, with pain oppressed. 

But only days of springtime lit with flowers 

And vintages of mornings sweet and fair. 

With health and heartsease gloriously blessed. 



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